GSAN: QAnon’s rude awakening | Inauguration rumors | Bias debate
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QAnon’s rude awakening For adherents of the collective conspiratorial delusion called QAnon, Inauguration Day was all part of the plan — until the plan fell apart.
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Viral rumor rundown ![]() NO: A military band did not play “Hit the Road Jack” in front of the White House during then-President Donald Trump’s final days in office. YES: The audio track on this video has been replaced. YES: The original video was tweeted on Jan. 18 by CNN’s Jim Acosta and shows the U.S. Army Band playing “National Emblem” as it rehearsed for the inauguration on the White House grounds. YES: The fact-checking organization Lead Stories found that the source of the “Hit the Road Jack” audio is a 2012 recording of the Ohio State University Marching Band. ![]() NO: President Joe Biden’s administration is not affiliated with the “antifa” (anti-fascism) movement. YES: The URL “antifa.com” began redirecting traffic to the White House homepage (whitehouse.gov) on Inauguration Day. NO: This is not evidence of any relationship between the antifa movement and the White House. YES: Anyone can purchase a web domain and redirect it to any other website they choose. YES: Prior to redirecting to whitehouse.gov, the site was redirecting to Biden's presidential campaign website. YES: The antifa.com web domain has been intermittently active since at least 1999 and, as these search results from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine show, it was for sale as recently as Jan. 30, 2020. ![]() NO: This video does not show National Guard troops turning their backs on President Joe Biden’s motorcade on Inauguration Day. YES: It shows National Guard members protecting the route taken by Biden’s motorcade on the way to the inauguration, including following routine protocol and facing out to watch for threats. YES: Lead Stories located the original video, which was tweeted by Ines de La Cuetara of ABC News on Jan. 20. |
★ NewsLit Picks Featured “'Transparency back to the briefing room': Psaki commits to pre-Trump press norms” (Matthew Choi, Politico). Related:
Quick Picks “All journalists are humans with feelings and emotions and opinions and biases.” (Wesley Lowery, Twitter thread).
“Trump-ally media outlet OAN quietly deleted articles about Dominion despite publicly doubling down on election conspiracy theories” (Jacob Shamsian, Business Insider via Yahoo News).
“After Capitol attack, social studies and civics teachers struggle with real-time history lessons” (Joe Heim and Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post).
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Thanks for reading! Your weekly issue of Get Smart About News is created by Peter Adams (@PeterD_Adams), Suzannah Gonzales and Hannah Covington (@HannahCov) of the News Literacy Project. It is edited by NLP’s Mary Kane (@marykkane). |
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