escape | (pipe) in liquid templates?

[jdfouse]

I have a number of values that contain "| News" and I want to strip them out via split. I have done this in the past without issue, however when adding the | pipe. It throws: "Liquid error: Cannot read property 'shift' of null"

Here is an example of the liquid I am using:

{{ variableX | split: '| News' | first }}
I have tried \| News & \\| News and the error remains.