News broke early this week that Twitch streamer Hasan Piker had been detained at O’Hare Airport and questioned about his political beliefs by a Customs and Border Protection agent on a trip back from Paris. According to reports in the Washington Post, NBC News, CBS News, Associated Press, New York Times, BBC — and virtually every other mainstream outlet — Piker was either "questioned" or "detained" for two hours.

Detaining Piker on the basis of his political orientation would, indeed, be an alarming development. Piker is an American citizen and, no matter what his ideological beliefs, he has a constitutionally protected right to express them without fear of harassment or intimidation.

There’s only one problem with the reporting on it: a simple look at the actual timeline of events showed that he could not have been detained for two hours — the amount of time he was screened was, at most, just over 50 minutes. And the length of questioning was probably not more than 18 minutes, according to statements Hasan himself made. Regardless, in reporting this story (and we cringe to use that term in this context), the media unscrupulously stenographed Piker’s own claims, failed to corroborate them, and in effect, repeated — in unison — an unambiguous inaccuracy. This inaccuracy formed the sole basis of the hyperpartisan media coverage that followed — without it, a story of an 18-minute screening (at most) would not have been news — or views. Let's dig in.