(AP) — The following is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online and work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.
This brief roundup offers some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these is legit, even though they were shared widely on social media.
NOT REAL: CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter and wife photographed with pipe bomb package.
THE FACTS: A photo of CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter and his wife, Jamie, sitting in their apartment next to a table with a pipe bomb package similar to those sent to high-profile targets in recent days is false. Stelter told The Associated Press on Thursday that the photo circulating on social media was doctored to add the package. The original photo appeared as part of a feature about the couple’s Manhattan apartment by 6sqft , a New York architecture news site. It ran on Jan. 16.
“This is despicable,” Stelter said. “It was photoshopped.”
Time Warner Center in Manhattan was evacuated Wednesday after CNN received one of the pipe bombs. It was addressed to former CIA director John Brennan, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump. Authorities have intercepted several pipe bomb packages this week, including ones sent to Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, actor Robert De Niro and liberal philanthropist George Soros.
On Friday, it was announced that a Florida man with a long criminal history has been charged.
NOT REAL: Photos show Mexican federal police officers injured by migrants in caravan.
THE FACTS: A set of three photos of injured federal police officers in Mexico were not taken after confrontations with migrants making their way in a caravan from Central America to the U.S., as suggested on posts circulating on social media.
In the most prominent photo, an officer is bleeding from a head wound. Gustavo Aguado Butanda, a local photographer in the Mexican state of Michoacan, told The Associated Press that he took the photo on Oct. 15, 2012, in Tiripetio. Butanda said that police had entered a school in the town during a clash involving “normalistas,” a group of students protesting modernization of curriculums.
In another photo (seen at the top of this article), an officer attempts to pull himself up onto a sidewalk after being injured in a clash with protesters in Chilpancingo, a city in the state of Guerrero, ahead of a concert scheduled for that night. Cristopher Rogel Blanquet, who took the photo in December of 2014, said the concert was to honor 43 students who went missing that year.
In the third photo, a police officer is bleeding from his nose amid a group of other officers in riot gear. Associated Press photographer Luis Alberto Cruz was present during the confrontation on Feb. 15, 2011. Cruz said the officer was injured in a clash with teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico.
NOT REAL: Photo shows massive crowd for President Donald Trump’s Houston rally
THE FACTS: A photo showing a crowd of nearly 1 million people engulfing major roadways was not taken during President Trump’s rally in Houston this week, as several people falsely claimed on social media.
The president stopped in Houston Monday to stump for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, as part of his multi-stop tour to mobilize GOP voters ahead of the midterm elections. Trump held the event at the 19,000-seat Toyota Center, where crowds gathered outside hours prior to his speech.
But the image circulating on social media was snapped in June 2016 during a million-person parade that took place in downtown Cleveland to celebrate the Cavaliers’ NBA championship. Using a drone, Bruce Bishop and Matt Mishak took the photo while covering the event for the Chronicle-Telegram, a newspaper in Elyria, Ohio.
NOT REAL: Ku Klux Klan formed by the Democratic Party
THE FACTS: The Klan first emerged after the Civil War in an effort to intimidate Southern blacks to stay out of politics and to exploit their labor. It was created in Pulaski, Tennessee, by Confederate veterans: Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones and James Crowe.
Mark Pitcavage, senior fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told The Associated Press that it was originally designed “purely for entertainment, with no political motivations.” Pitcavage said members engaged in social antics that grew to incorporate cruel pranks. The Klan gradually took on a political tone, and by 1867 it began engaging in violent acts.
According to Pitcavage, many KKK members were Democrats since the Whig Party had died out and white Southerners disliked the Republican party. He says, though, that the Klan was not started by the Democratic Party “nor did it have ideological motives until later.”
Written by The Associated Press.
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Sad doctoring and parsing.
A bit more about slavery —
“The Republican Party at its beginning consisted of African-American and White Northern Protestants, businessmen, small business owners, professionals, factory workers, and farmers. It was pro-business, supporting banks, the gold standard, railroads and high tariffs to protect factory workers and grow industry faster. Under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, it emphasized an expansive foreign policy.”
Why is ST news posting fake news now? At least they’re being honest about it in the headline. Not even going to read the article because it’s fake
Klan history
According to a History.com entry on the Klan:
Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders.
Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal – the reestablishment of white supremacy – fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s.
And like as if the bombs delivered yesterday were an attempt to gain sympathy for the obamunists and clintonestas.
What are you talking about???
One thing that has to be remembered is that over the decades what Democrats and what Republicans stand for has changed, evolved. For instance, if Lincoln were in politics today, he would probably be thought of as a Democrat, same with Teddy Roosevelt and probably Dwight Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy would very likely be thought of as a Republican. None of these examples would have been either party in all of their policies, but their core beliefs would have put them in different parties today than when they were in politics. Point is, what the Democrats of the early KKK era believed in is more in line with the far right of today, example, Trump’s resistance to condemn the white supremist groups and his insistence upon being a Nationalist, as was Hitler, another strong Nationalist.