What’s green and has wheels?

To start this year, I’ll play back an interaction I had with my son last weekend.

• My son: Dad, what’s green and has wheels?
• Me: I don’t know. What’s green and has wheels?
• My son: Grass…I lied about the wheels.

This simple riddle got me thinking, as it can easily be applied to the business of misinformation. Just as my son had me guessing objects such as green wagons and garbage trucks, there’s a huge amount of media purposely misleading us every day. The wheels were — and are — never there.