The search to stand up one of the most misleading stories to have ever graced our newspapers continued this week with a desperate social media shout out for children who identify as animals.
Women and Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch has written to the schools watchdog Ofsted requesting that it inspect Rye College in East Sussex after a teacher was reportedly recorded telling a pupil she was “despicable” for refusing to accept her classmate identified as a cat.
The news has prompted outrage among Daily Mail, Telegraph and GB News reporters, as well as Piers Morgan who claimed this is “going on in schools up and down the country”.
Except, it’s really not.
In a statement this week, the school said none of its pupils “identify as a cat or any other animal”, and a school leaders union warned there must be a “sense of proportion”, accusing the minister of unnecessarily getting involved and “grandstanding”.
Others have hit out at newspapers for publishing “fake news” reports on the matter.
But that hasn’t stopped hungry journos from trying to bag a juicy scoop.
Unfortunately for one, it didn’t go quite how she planned after a ‘journorequest’ was given the social media treatment.
Check out the responses below:
Related: A convenient distraction: the ‘overpopulation’ myth needs a sense of perspective