Wishing conflict into existence
More examples of viral outrage stories that turned out to be false, but only after the damage was done.
How it started:
How it spread:
How it turned out:
How the apologies went:
On the other end of the spectrum, a front-page story in the New York Post about homeless veterans purportedly being turfed from a hotel to make way for illegal immigrants was apparently based on a hoax:
State Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson (D, Newburgh) is calling on State Attorney General Letitia James to investigate the Yerik Israel Toney (YIT) Foundation and its CEO, Sharon Toney-Finch, after several news reports debunked Toney-Finch’s recent claim that 20 homeless veterans under YIT care were displaced by asylum seekers at the Crossroads Hotel in the Town of Newburgh.
“The recent arrival of asylum seekers in the Town of Newburgh has caused disruption enough without the additional outrage generated by Toney-Finch’s lies. Before her sham was revealed, Republican legislators like Assemblymember Brian Maher, Senator Rob Rolison, and Senator Bill Weber quickly moved to fan the flames of xenophobia by recklessly amplifying Toney-Finch’s falsehoods on Fox News and a range of other media outlets,” Jacobson said.
Maher told Mid-Hudson News that he was duped into believing YIT’s lies.
“Thanks to hardworking journalists at the Mid-Hudson News and the Albany Times-Union, the true story is now emerging.
Last week, Toney-Finch recruited several homeless men from a shelter in Poughkeepsie and allegedly offered them food and money to pose as YIT-assisted veterans who were kicked out of their lodging by the newly arrived migrants. According to reports, either Toney-Finch or an associate doctored credit card receipts to make it look like the Crossroads Hotel had accepted payment to house YIT “veterans,” Jacobson said.
“Adding to the demagoguery, Toney-Finch’s actions compounded an already volatile situation and put both the asylum seekers and the staff at the Crossroads Hotel at risk,” he said.
Was the Post an active participant in this fraud, or one of the marks? I’m inclined toward the latter, especially considering it has since reported on the fraud allegations.
Tabloids like the Post - in the interest of full disclosure, let me confess that it’s one of my guilty-pleasure papers and the one I always read when I’m in NYC - publish first and fact check later, throwing everything against the wall on the assumption that some of it (like the Hunter Biden laptop) will turn out to be true even though more reputable outlets passed, assuming the risk for some of it turning out to be false.
And this is the kind of story that could have been AI-generated to hit the Post’s outrage centers, just like the “Citi Bike Karen” appeared to be a spot-on sequel to the “Central Park Karen” viral story from 2020. (And even that one turned out to be much more complicated than initially reported, though the mob had moved on through several different targets by then.)
Thanks to social media, we’re all tabloid journalists now. How many more times am I going to have to tap this sign?