Anti-Islamic extremist Pamela Geller responded to the Chattanooga shootings yesterday by promoting a bogus link to ISIS. Her pals at Fox News reported her inflammatory falsehood first, then fact-checked later.
On Fox’s Your World show, reporter Catherine Herridge reported on the Chattanooga, Tennessee massacre that killed four Marines and the alleged link to ISIS.
HERRIDGE: We’re taking a hard look at a Twitter account, an ISIS linked Twitter account, that seemed to have foreknowledge of the shooting in Chattanooga. The tweet went out at 10:34, with the hashtag Chattanooga, referring to American dogs and a likely shooting. This of course was about 15 minutes before the shooting took place.
According to Media Matters, the source of this claim is Geller, an anti-Islamic fanatic whose recent publicity stunt nearly resulted in the deaths of two police officers in Texas. And, surprise! Her latest efforts were proved a sham. Media Matters notes:
Geller made the claim on Twitter and on her blog, writing, “This morning an ISIS supporter tweeted this at 10:34 am—the shooting started at 10:45.” The report cited by Hannity from Jihad Watch cites Geller as the source. Spencer has often worked with Geller on anti-Muslim projects.
But the tweet was posted at 1:34 p.m. Eastern time, not 10:34 a.m., as Geller asserted. According to news reports, the shooting “unfolded at two sites over 30 minutes” and started “around 10:45 a.m. ET.”
The confusion seemed to arise from the fact that Twitter time stamps its tweets with the user’s time zone, not the tweeter’s. You’d think this would be something Fox News would have thought of. (It seems to have been Mashable editor Brian Ries who first caught the error.)
Meanwhile, the bogus claim was repeated on Fox, including on The O’Reilly Factor – even as host Bill O’Reilly acknowledged in his Talking Points commentary at the beginning of the show, “It is not exactly clear whether it’s accurate.”
It wasn’t until later in the show (you can see the time stamp in the video) that Fox’s Bret Baier told O’Reilly there was no legitimacy to Geller’s latest fear mongering (though, of course, neither noted that it was Geller behind the false alarm). And, Baier still made a point of suggesting that we should still think of a connection to ISIS:
BAIER: All indications now are that (the tweet) came out after the attack, and that it either was a Pacific time stamp or - but it looks like…
O’REILLY: A bogus situation?
BAIER: Yeah, and that, but nevertheless, it was touting the attack as a success for ISIS. But it wasn’t a preconceived thing.
Watch the segments below, from the July 16 Your World and The O’Reilly Factors, all via Media Matters.
“isis could be connected. his father was on the terror watch list!! who else but a muslim radical extremist would shoot up a military base ? (fort hood 2009)”
Someone else, for some reason : Fort Hood 2014, Fort Bliss 2015, Washington Navy Yard 2013…
If you want to appear like a fucking idiot, you’re going to get called a fucking idiot.
And if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the fucking kitchen.
You might also want to consider how “friends” often are blind to reality. Think about all the times when neighbors of serial killers are astonished when the killer is revealed. “He was always so helpful.” “He was such a quiet young man—never the least bit of trouble.”
What was it that led Dylann Roof to enter an African-American church and spend time in a prayer circle before deciding to kill his fellow worshipers? What radicalized him to murder innocent people?
Why do WHITE guys who commit mass murder get written off as “disturbed” individuals, just another “lone wolf” instead of being properly labeled as terrorists? Why didn’t FoxNoise spend time on his crimes? Oh, right. Ostensibly a white Christian racist who could’ve gotten a job at FoxNoise in a few years.
And, remember Cliven Bundy? And his little band of terrorists who actually put US LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL in the sights of a sniper rifle? Why didn’t FoxNoise described them as terrorists? (Especially as a couple of self-proclaimed Bundy supporters KILLED a cop in Las Vegas. A WHITE couple—who, again, weren’t labeled as terrorists.)
Of course, there’s no HARD EVIDENCE of any such real link, but “could” is an auxiliary verb indicating possibility.
