Jim Hoft’s Bogus Story About CNN “Lightening” Oregon Shooter’s Photo Goes Viral
Tonight we have another absolutely bogus right wing fake outrage to report. The Stupidest Man on the Internet, Jim Hoft, posted this earlier today, linking to a barely concealed white supremacist website (to which I will not link, because they’re disgusting and horrible):
From @gatewaypundit, this claim spread to Alex Jones’s right wing conspiracy site, because of course it did:
But here’s the thing, folks. CNN’s Brian Stelter set the record straight earlier today, pointing out that CNN has not shown ANY images of the Oregon shooter:
@PruPaine @HowardKurtz @Mamadoxie it’s not real. CNN hasn’t shown any images of gunman. please consider the source of what you saw online
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 4, 2015
To verify what Brian said, I’ve now spent more than two hours going through CNN video and haven’t found a single image of the gunman, let alone a “lightened” one. I don’t know who created this crude Photoshopped image, but it wasn’t CNN.
Verdict: it’s another fake race-baiting story intended to incite hatred in the right wing base — the hatred that presidential candidate Donald Trump is capitalizing on.
And tonight, this fake story is going viral on Twitter.
LGF contributor King Kenrod notes that the faked image probably originated at troll hole 8chan:
