Daily Aksam, one of the many Turkish pro-government newspapers, ran on Jan. 18 a bizarre story titled “America did not forgive its academics.” The article reported that some 75 academics at universities in the United States who claimed 9/11 had been an inside job “were arrested by the FBI, as demanded by the US Senate.” The photo that accompanied the story showed renowned American intellectual Cornel West being handcuffed by two police officers.

The impressive story was published in almost every pro-government media outlet. Daily Sabah, another passionately pro-government paper, added to its report that US Vice President Joe Biden, who dared to advise the Turkish government on academic freedom during his recent visit to Turkey, voted “yes” in the Senate to have these American academics arrested.

The story was unabashedly fake. Yes, a few of the 9/11 Truth campaigners had problems at their universities, but an “FBI arrest” never took place, nor a “Senate vote” that requested arrests. (Hence, Biden never took part in such a “vote.”) The photo showing a handcuffed West was unrelated to this “news story”; West was arrested during the Ferguson protests in October 2014.

So why did the pro-government media invent such a blatantly fake story? And what does this tell us about the state of affairs in Turkey?