Someone used my name & that of @WPLGLocal10 to lend credence to something that, as far as I know, is false.

THREAD: How the headline for a 2014 story about a bus crash was manipulated, altered and made into actual FAKE NEWS during a global health crisis.

I received an email from someone saying they had trouble finding an article that appeared to have been written by me.

The only problem is, I had written no such article & @WPLGLocal10 has no reporting as of this date regarding cases of Covid-19 among Broward Transit workers.

(3/?) Apparently this image has been circulating online. When I saw it, I knew it had obvious red flags.

1. I haven’t reported in Broward since last week & it was a schools story.

2. It has no sub headline or date.

3. The thumbnail has our old logo on the bottom right.

(4/?) I deduced someone took a REAL article & photoshopped the headline. I set out to find the original & searched “Broward county transit” on http://Local10.com . First article with a bus in the image. When you play it, you can see the portion that was screengrabbed.

That email I showed a few tweets ago was not the only message I got about that “article”. I had another person claim they read it. I had to call them out since, well, NOTHING BESIDES A FAKE HEADLINE EXISTS.

(6/?) In conclusion, if you see an image with my name on it from @WPLGLocal10 claiming that more than 30 Broward Transit workers were found to have coronavirus, it is simply FALSE. The image is a fake. I have not written such an article & no one at Local 10 has reported this.

(7/?) This is not to say that NO ONE at Broward Transit got the virus. We just don’t know how many, if any. Working to find out & bring you actual ACCURATE reporting. But I spoke to Chris Walton, director of Broward Transportation by phone. He said the 30+ figure was “not true”.

(8/?) Lastly, I want to say that part of me is trying to put myself in the shoes of the person who went so far as to create this fake headline... let me explain.

(9/?) Could this be a person who just wants to create a little chaos? Maybe.

Or maybe this is someone who has real concerns about transit workers, & thought making it seem that it was a real media report would lend credence to these worries.

If that’s the motivation... (cont)

(10/10) ...then these efforts are misguided & cause more harm than any possible good (although I struggle to see ANY good in actions like these).

Thank you to the man who first brought this to my attention with a keen eye.

Be safe out there. Online, and in this crisis.