Do you have any idea what it takes to get me to write a post these days? I’m over here trying to grow the #empire and letting Kevin, Bob, Anthony, Russ and crew man the ship, but there are a few beats I’ll never rescind: RADIO WARS, hawking t-shirts, and raking Sam Carchidi – AN ORIGINAL CORE FOUR MEMBER – over the barbs of baffled interwebs observers everywhere.

Carchidi, who writes for The Inquirer, which last I checked still exists, was exposed to a clearly fake trade rumor involving Wayne Simmonds. Fake, because it appears to be a hybrid of a Twitter post in a Facebook timeline– or is it a Facebook post in a Twitter timeline? Who knows! Here it is:

Sam, being the intrepid reporter he is, breaking piping hot stories from the team game notes on the reg, did some digging, apparently set up shop outside the GM box to speak with Chuck Fletcher, and informed the masses that this TSN report was not true:

Thanks, Sam. Thing is… the story wasn’t removed– it never existed, something noted by Twitter users…

… and TSN’s own Bob McKenzie:

Despite the push back, Carchidi now had a scoop and doubled-down on his straw-man report:

There’s an Inception level of screenshots here – mine included – but the “report” Sam was citing appears to be a Photoshop-ed Tweet with bad fonts inside a Facbeook feed… saved to Sam’s phone, undoubtedly alongside images of Nessie, Bigfoot, and scores of pictures proving that Hillary Clinton is a lizard.

McKenzie wasn’t done:

Carchidi, reeling, tried to excuse his journalistic malfeasance by chalking it up to this fascinating web machine we now use:

Twitter users were quick to offer up more reports for Carchidi to verify:

https://twitter.com/notdrouinsogood/status/1085026620820209664

Sam is on it.