Tag: hoax

Not One Corpse Has Been Found In The ‘Mass Grave’ Of Indigenous Children In Canada

Remember last summer when a mass grave containing the remains of hundreds of children was found on the grounds of a former government boarding school for indigenous children in British Columbia, Canada?

In the seven months since this shocking news broke, not one body has been found, and not a single shovel-full of dirt has been excavated from the site in question. Contrary to the worldwide media coverage last summer, nothing, in fact, has been “discovered” on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

In a healthy society, this would be a scandal. A story that grabbed headlines for a week and inspired arson attacks that destroyed dozens of churches in Canada turns out to be based on flimsy, unexamined evidence at best, and an outright, pernicious lie at worst.

You might remember the overblown coverage. CNN breathlessly reported on what it called the “gruesome discovery.” The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation appended a warning label to its coverage, saying “this story contains details some readers may find distressing.” The Washington Post declared that news of the mass grave had “dragged the horror of Canada’s mistreatment of Indigenous people back into the spotlight.” Every corporate outlet took it for granted that a mass grave containing hundreds of corpses had indeed been discovered—corpses of children, no less. They reported it as fact.

Politicians quickly fell in line. Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau tweeted that the discovery “is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history.” British Columbia Premier John Horgan said he was “horrified and heartbroken.” The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called it “a large scale human rights violation,” and called on Canada and the Vatican to investigate.

Tribal leaders in Canada went further and said the discovery was evidence of “mass murder of indigenous people,” that it was an “attempted genocide.” Some of them compared the priests and nuns who ran the boarding schools to Nazis, implying that, like the Nazis, these people should answer for their crimes.

Flags were lowered to half-mast. Calls were issued for an inquiry. Important and serious people said there must be a reckoning with Canada’s racist past. Lamentations poured forth from Catholic bishops for the church’s role in running these government boarding schools.

And then came the arson. In June, dozens of churches across Canada, most of them Catholic and some of them more than a century old, were burned to the ground. No church was safe. As my colleague Chris Bedford reported at the time, “In Calgary, 10 churches of various denominations were vandalized in a single night. A few days later, a Vietnamese church was set on fire — just hours after it held its first full service in more than a year.”

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Smollett just one in a string of false accusations by Trump opponents

The sad case of actor Jussie Smollett and his now-proven-false claims that he was viciously attacked by racist Trump supporters is not an isolated case.

But the media holds a great deal of blame for reporting initial instances and claims without using normal journalistic practices and standards that would have protected against misreporting.

Lessons should have been taken from numerous cases of high-profile wrongly-accused, whether it’s Richard Jewell falsely blamed (and later cleared) in the Atlanta Olympic bombings, Officer Darren Wilson falsely blamed (and later cleared by the Obama Justice Dept.) in the shooting of Michael Brown (the Justice Dept. concluded the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” claims were fabricated), Wen Ho Lee accused (but never charged and then prevailing in libel lawsuits against media) in the Chinese theft of our most sensitive nuclear secrets, Kyle Rittenhouse accused (but later cleared) of wrongful shootings of his attackers during a riot, the Covington Catholic kids falsely portrayed as being aggressive against a Native American protester, the University of Virginia frat brothers falsely accused of sexual abuse in a Rolling Stone article, Steven Hatfill falsely accused by the FBI in anthrax attacks, Trump and campaign associate Carter Page as supposed Russian spies, well– the list goes on. You can think of others.

If only the media were to follow normal standards and practices when these cases arise (reporting fairly, attributing claims, reporting both sides of a story), then we wouldn’t ultimately shoulder so much of the blame for the out-of-control false narratives that derive from the news reports.

When it. are to Smollett’s accusations, some media outlets responsibly reported and properly attributed allegations. But others did not. Some unskeptically furthered the narrative that Smollett, who is black, was attacked by Trump-supporting racists who put a noose around Smollett’s neck, shouted racial slurs, told him it’s “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) country, and poured bleach on him. The New York Times deserves special mention here for adding a biased non sequitur in its early reporting that treated skepticism of Smollett’s story as if it were unfounded, and fit in a dig at President Trump’s son.


But the lack of progress in the investigation has fueled speculation about whether the report was exaggerated. The president?s son Donald Trump Jr., who is known to disseminate conspiracy theories on his Twitter feed, retweeted an article this week about Smollett declining to turn over his cellphone to the police.

New York Times reporting on the Smollett claims

Here are but a few of the other cases whereby Trump opponents staged fake attacks or made false claims. The initial accusations were widely reported; the follow ups were not so widely reported.

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Prosecutors in Smollett Case Lied to the Public, Special Prosecutor Finds

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and prosecutors in her office lied and misled the public about the case against Jussie Smollett, according to a special prosecutor’s case released Monday.

Foxx, a Democrat whose campaign was backed by billionaire George Soros, initially said there was a “strong case” against Smollett for faking a hate crime against himself that would have led to a conviction. But Foxx claimed days later that certain aspects of the case “would have made securing a conviction against Smollett uncertain.”

Dan Webb, a special prosecutor appointed to probe the actions of Foxx and her underlings, said the pivot was “false and misleading.”

The office also offered a series of other false and misleading statements, Webb’s report said.

Foxx recused herself from the case in 2019 because she was rumored to be related to or have a relationship with Smollett or his family. But, according to legal rules, Foxx had to recuse her entire office and ask the court to appoint a special prosecutor. Foxx instead chose to keep in place a prosecutor she appointed from within her office to oversee the case.

The office and Foxx “made the decision to ignore this major legal defect seemingly because they did not want to admit they had made such a major mistake of judgment,” Webb wrote, adding that they “then compounded the problem by making a false statement to the media” about the matter.

Foxx and/or prosecutors in her office also falsely said Smollett had no criminal background when they dismissed the initial case against him, falsely represented that $10,000 was the most Smollett could have been ordered to pay in restitution, and were misleading when they claimed the dismissal was not unusual because they could not identify any similar cases, according to the report.

Foxx’s office engaged in substantial abuses of discretion and breached obligations of honesty and transparency, Webb concluded.

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HATE HOAX: Police say no hate crime in viral high school hijab incident

Following a viral altercation involving a hijab that occurred at Fairfax High School on Dec. 14 that prompted CAIR-backed student protests, the Fairfax Police Department have concluded that there is no evidence of a hate crime.

On Dec. 14, student Ekran Mohamed said she was called racist slurs, was pushed by two male classmates, and had her hijab pulled, revealing her hair.

In an Instagram video posted several days ago by a woman identifying Mohamed as her niece, Mohamed described the incident.

She said during a monthly meeting with marketing classes, a male Egyptian student “drew the Islamic flag and put a cross on it, like a red cross, like an X.”

She added that the male student then specifically looked at her and her two female Muslim friends. After class ended, Mohamed said she walked to see a friend, and her backpack accidentally hit a male student. Mohamed said the male student’s friends told him she said he was “ugly and little.”

Following that, the male student tried to grab Mohamed’s hijab from the back, she said. She turned around and grabbed his hair, and punched him in the stomach. Mohamed said that the male student then threw her into a desk, resulting in bruising to the left side of her body. Paramedics were called because Mohamed collapsed on the floor because she couldn’t breathe. The paramedics were called for what the school said was a panic attack.

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Top 10 Democrats Who Fell For Convicted Felon Jussie Smollett’s Hate Crime Hoax

Disgraced actor Jussie Smollett became a convicted felon on Thursday evening after a jury found him guilty on 5 out of 6 felony disorderly conduct charges stemming from a hate crime hoax that he staged on himself in 2019.

“He was found guilty of telling a police officer he was a hate crime victim, telling an officer he was a battery victim, telling a detective he was a hate crime victim, telling a detective he was a battery victim and then telling a detective again he was battery victim,” Fox News reported. “He was not found guilty on a sixth charge of telling a second detective he was an aggravated battery victim.”

Numerous top Democrats rushed to pounce on Smollett’s initial claims that he had been attacked by purported Trump supporters.

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Black Lives Matter stands in solidarity with Jussie Smollett: ‘We can never believe police’

A Black Lives Matter leader said Tuesday that the movement will continue to support Jussie Smollett regardless of the outcome of his trial, which she described as a “white supremacist charade.”

Melina Abdullah, a former California State University professor and police abolitionist who co-founded BLM Los Angeles, said Smollett — who is accused of faking a racist, homophobic hate crime against himself — “has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom.”

“As abolitionists, we approach situations of injustice with love and align ourselves with our community. Because we got us,” Abdullah said in a statement on the website for the BLM movement’s national arm, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. 

“So let’s be clear: we love everybody in our community. It’s not about a trial or a verdict decided in a white supremacist charade, it’s about how we treat our community when corrupt systems are working to devalue their lives,” said Abdullah, who is currently director of BLM Grassroots, a “Defund the Police” group. 

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Smollett Testifies CNN’s Lemon Warned Him Police Were Suspicious Over Alleged FAKE Racist Attack

Days after CNN fired Chris Cuomo for abusing his position to help feed information to his sex pest accused brother, it appears that another host, Don Lemon, could become the centre of another journalistic ethics scandal.

Reports indicate that Lemon was pinpointed by Empire star Jussie Smollett who claimed in court that he received texts from the CNN host warning him that police believed Smollett had faked his own attack in February 2019.

Smollett was indicted by a grand jury for staging a racist violent attack on himself and blaming it on Trump supporters.

Witnesses inside the courtroom revealed the details of the testimony.

The Daily Mail reports that the details about Lemon were stricken from the record, writing “Testifying in court on Monday, Smollett, 39, claimed he had been in contact with CNN’s Don Lemon during the early stages of the CPD investigation.”

The report adds that “In a remark that was presented and then struck from the record, he said things began to seem off when he received a text message from Lemon claiming the Chicago police had reached out to him to say they didn’t believe Smollett. “

Don Lemon discussed the case Monday night on his show with CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez (he who uttered the infamous line “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”) but both failed to mention that Lemon’s own name had been brought up by Smollett during the hearing.

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