Discussions of irresponsible media coverage often lead to the fictional character of Wenlock Jakes. Supposedly the “highest paid journalist of the United States,” this infamous figure features in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel, Scoop, the classic satire of editorial egos and reportorial incompetence. Jakes is hugely influential, despite—or because of—his loose grasp of facts.

Jakes’s misreporting changes the course of history. Having overslept on a train in the Balkans, he gets out in the wrong country. Undaunted by such minor inconveniences, he files a colorful, made-up dispatch, featuring every cliche of his trade: “barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window.”

Discussions of irresponsible media coverage often lead to the fictional character of Wenlock Jakes. Supposedly the “highest paid journalist of the United States,” this infamous figure features in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel, Scoop, the classic satire of editorial egos and reportorial incompetence. Jakes is hugely influential, despite—or because of—his loose grasp of facts.

Jakes’s misreporting changes the course of history. Having overslept on a train in the Balkans, he gets out in the wrong country. Undaunted by such minor inconveniences, he files a colorful, made-up dispatch, featuring every cliche of his trade: “barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window.”

Other newspapers hurriedly send their correspondents to match this extraordinary story. They find everything quiet, but as Jakes is still filing his daily 1,000 words of “blood and thunder,” they join the pile-on, adding their own sensationalist coverage. The result is a financial crisis, a state of emergency, famine, mutiny—and a real revolution.

Jakes’s ghost is stalking Europe today. Alarmist headlines could all too easily prompt the crisis that they invent. Then as now, lazy coverage and outright scaremongering shape perceptions—and perceptions shape policies and events. But the digital age makes it worse. Search engines, chatbots, social media algorithms, and ordinary human behavior all reflect and amplify the most fashionable take. Type “Is Estonia in danger?” into Google, and the general answer is “yes.”

At minimum, that hurts business confidence, public morale, and political stability—exactly what countries such as Russia like to see in their potential victims. The misconceptions spread by the heirs of Jakes have become a national security priority for countries on Russia’s front line.

Take, for example, “Putin’s next target: Estonia is girding itself for an invasion as its Russian minority grows restless,” an article published by the Economist in June, reported from the Estonian border city of Narva, and promoted on social media since then. Although the text of the piece is more balanced, the catastrophizing headline aroused fury in Tallinn, the Estonian capital; Estonians told me that their anguished requests to editors in London to change the headline were unsuccessful.

It is entirely legitimate, of course, for journalists to ask questions about how NATO’s defense and deterrence are configured to protect Estonia or to examine local loyalties. Russia’s land grab in Ukraine stems from deep-rooted imperialism. Though the Kremlin has not won outright, its decision to change borders by force has been vindicated. So other places could be next. Why not Estonia? It was occupied and colonized by the Soviet Union for decades, leaving linguistic and ethnic divisions that Russia could exploit. In the eastern frontier city of Narva, fewer than half the city’s 50,000-odd residents are Estonian citizens. The main language spoken there is........

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