Fake News: Jamaica NOT to Become a U.S. Territory

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Fake news website USA News/states-tv.com pubished an article titled "Jamaica to become a U.S territory - Andrew Holness hints" that falsely claims Jamaica is about to become part of the United States of America giving inhabitants the benefit of visa-free travel to and inside the U.S.

The article starts off like this:

The Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, has told the media that Jamaica is on the verge of becoming a territory of the United States.

According to Andrew Holness, Jamaica would be joining Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa to become permanently inhabited territory of the United States.

"This has been a request on the table for quite sometime. Trump administration has made it very favorable for us." - The PM said.

Of course none of it is true: a Google News search for "Andrew Holness United States" returns exactly zero results related to the story which is kind of odd since this would be breaking news in both countries if it was true and he "has told the media" acording to the very first sentence so why would they not be all over this?

The website also has all the classic hallmarks of a fake news website: tons of popup ads, undated articles and a front page that is a collection of headlines and articles stolen from other websites like The Huffington Post or The Observer.

The fake story is spreading like wildfire according to the Trendolizer graph at the end of this article. If you see someone sharing this rumor feel free to send them here to get educated...

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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