For those of you unawares, the media was duped by a fake account purporting to be Ammon Bundy, son of Clive and a part of that mess in Oregon. The most high-profile case is Shaun King, who wrote an article responding to the fake tweet and the New York Daily News which refused to acknowledge the error. Freddie points out, though, that it was a remarkably widespread error:
Today, dozens of journalists and hundreds of their followers were effortlessly rolled by an unverified Twitter account that compared conservative moron Ammon Bundy to beloved Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks. A bunch of predictable pieces got posted; a thousand outraged tweets were sent into the wild. And all without anyone bothering to consider the fact that any random person can start a Twitter account. One journalist — one– bothered to actually check the facts. MSNBC’s Tony Dokoupil, who’s on the ground at the site in question, asked Bundy, and Bundy said the Twitter account is not real. The account also posted while Bundy was chatting with journalists. Dokoupil actually did his job. Meanwhile, a ton of people who base their whole self-conception on the idea that they are savvier and smarter than everyone else got played for fools, because the narrative played so perfectly into their assumptions.
What I find especially weird about this is that people were taken in by a very similar ruse just four months ago, when Kim Davis allegedly compared herself to Rosa Parks on Twitter (via her husband).
So, dear media and tweeps and everybody, next time some conservative that seems to have a persecution complex compares himself or herself to Rosa Parks on Twitter, and it just seems too perfect… maybe it is.
our crack journalist class getting the hard-hitting scoop about "Ammon Bundy" comparing himself to Rosa Parks pic.twitter.com/iHsv5kq6FZ
— Freddie deBoer (@freddiedeboer) January 6, 2016