False police reports are not fake news, but when the news uses a false police report as proof to run a story on rampant islamaphobia sweeping the nation, then it is fake news.

I think I'm missing something here.  How is the news supposed to know which police reports are true and which are false?  

Maybe a little thing called investigative journalism.

The problem is that before we had any confirmation the story exploded and reached headlines around the world. That shouldn’t happen. Irresponsible journalism is insanely dangerous

Guys, in almost every  crime case that a police report is filed for, news outlets pick up the story and change their language for the fact that it is alleged. 

From there, the internet does what it does.   What I am saying is that it is unthinkable that the original local new outlets would not report an alleged attack on a child.  

What it sounds like happened after that is that people reported on it without further details or investigation.   That's the issue.  I mean welcome to the internet.  We should expect for previous stories to be corrected.  But reporting on alleged allegations is not fake news.  No one in their right mind would suggest not reporting it via news.   Sensationalizing a false report is the issue hopefully we can all agree on that.   You don't know if its fake, but you know if you are sensationalizing it for the masses. 

Edit:

Also, if she told them she was attacked for being Muslim, how would anyone know?  You should be applauding the police for getting to the bottom of this.   I refuse to be expected to start reading minds... nope not gonna do it.

That's the issue. News stations need to stop manipulating events and turning it into an escalated issue when it shouldn't be. Let's never forget the Boston Bombings and how a man was literally harassed (along with his family) due to false information. 

Before we blame the internet we should blame how they receive the information. if they didn't want this to be such a huge issue, it should've been reported as "minor allegedly attacked by man with pair of scissors" instead of the dramatic bullshit we are fed on the news. 

Almost no true report is sensationalized. The overwhelming majority are false (or false to a certain extent). I'll continue to blame the media before I blame the people gullible to still fall for developing stories written in clickbaity form

I think the bigger question is how long before the news starts telling you that it is wrong to complain about the weather and that any hatred towards the weather won't be tolerated and eventually needs laws written to assure it's properly policed.

Like this? 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/29/donald-trump-good-old-global-warming-us-winter

Kind of yup. lol