Trump renamed Lake Ontario. Newsrooms still have to decide what to call it
The AP is sticking with Lake Ontario, as it did with Gulf of Mexico. Its decision shows why changing a name doesn’t necessarily change common usage.
For the Associated Press stylebook, Gulf of Mexico stayed. Lake Ontario will, too.
In January 2025, Donald Trump, fresh into his second term, issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America and restore the name Mount McKinley to Alaska’s Denali. On Aug. 27, embroiled in a trade war with Canada, Trump issued a new executive order to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America.
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In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
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