Fake news alert: A Macomb County morgue employee was not accidentally cremated

By Michael Jackman

Dec 7, 2017 at 12:14 pm

Audio By Carbonatix

[
          {
            "name": "GPT - Leaderboard - Inline - Content",
            "component": "35519556",
            "insertPoint": "5th",
            "startingPoint": "3",
            "requiredCountToDisplay": "3",
            "maxInsertions": 100,
            
            "adList": [
              {
                "adPreset": "LeaderboardInline"
              }
            ]
          }
          
        ]

Photo courtesy Shutterstock

"Oh my god, this is horrible! Now I have to go to Snopes every time I read a news item I care about!"

Over the last several days, a "news" report that an employee at the Macomb County morgue was accidentally cremated has been making the rounds. If you agonized over this story, or felt sorry for the victim's family, take heart: The story is as fake as they come.

The truth about 'fake news'

A story at "www.abcnews-us.com" featuring a purloined ABC logo alleges that 48-year old Henri Paul Johnson was taking a nap on a stretcher when another employee mistook him for the corpse of a 52-year-old car accident victim and carried him to the crematory, where he was burned alive.

While it's a compelling story that evoked strong emotional reactions and many shares, there's the slight problem that it's not at all factual.

Patty Roland, manager of operations and the Macomb County Medical Examiner's office tells MT that not only are the people named in the story not county employees, and that none of the office's employees recently deceased, the agency doesn't even have a crematory.

So in this case, the only innocent people who got burned were news readers. (Another reason why remaining watchful about "fake news" was a key plank in our "Trump Survival Guide.")

Tags:

About The Author

Michael Jackman

Born in 1969 at Mount Carmel hospital in Detroit, Jackman grew up just 100 yards from the Detroit city line in east Dearborn. Jackman has attended New York University, the School of Visual Arts, Northwestern University and Wayne State University, though he never got a degree. He has worked as a bar back, busboy,...