Right-wing U.S. media covered fiction as fact: A non-existent terrorist attack from Canada at Rainbow Bridge

For a few hours Wednesday afternoon, Canada appeared to be staring down the barrel of an unwelcome and potentially painful international crisis.

News reports were awash in misinformation following an explosion at the Canada-U.S. border crossing at Rainbow Bridge near Niagara Falls.  

Some U.S. media began describing it as a terrorist explosion, caused by a vehicle entering from Canada.

Every element of that preceding sentence was dispelled within hours as flat-out wrong. 

There was no attack from Canada; the incident occurred entirely on U.S. soil; in fact, authorities don't believe it was a terrorist attack at all.

That didn't stop a candidate for president of the United States from appearing on Fox News to promote an aspect of his platform: Building a border wall with Canada.

"I have been sounding the alarm bell about the northern border for a long time," said Vivek Ramaswamy during a lengthy interview about an incident he did not witness, was not a subject-matter expert on, and had no insight into.

"This is a mounting crisis. We're ignoring it."

The Republican candidate's argument for a border wall involves a spike in fentanyl seizures at the Canadian border. Left unsaid by him: seizures near Canada amount to approximately 0.0074 per cent of the fentanyl seized by U.S. border officials this year — or about one kilo at the northern border out of the 12 tonnes seized overall.

Scrutiny shifted swiftly to Canada's immigration system.

On Fox News, talking heads were talking about their porous borders, and also about Canada's allegedly porous immigration system.

"It is untenable to let millions of people into this country when we don't know who they are," said former State Department official Morgan Ortagus.

"Similarly, there have been people hawkish on immigration who have not been comfortable with Canada's vetting system."

One host on Fox News expressed astonishment that this had suddenly become the biggest story in the country, supplanting the hostage release in Gaza.