Anatomy of a smear: How far-right websites spread a fake story about Pete Buttigieg

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

Anatomy of a smear: How far-right websites spread a fake story about Pete Buttigieg

By Sara Murray and Brian Stelter, CNN
Updated 2055 GMT (0455 HKT) May 5, 2019

(CNN) — This is a story about how political operatives tried to take down a presidential candidate, and ended up just humiliating themselves.

It's also a story about how a smear was spread by right-wing websites -- and was cleaned up by newsrooms that took some time to check the facts.

On April 29 someone shared a post titled "Pete Buttigieg Sexually Assaulted Me" on Medium, a site that lets anyone upload stories, essays and any other bit of text. It was attributed to a college student named Hunter Kelly.

Within hours, the fake allegation against the South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential candidate would begin to crumble, and the real story -- the story of the smear campaign -- would emerge.

But by then, the Medium post already had 12,000 Facebook interactions. It ricocheted around the right-wing internet, thanks to sites like Big League Politics, InfoWars, NewsWars and The Gateway Pundit, potentially reaching millions of readers, according to a media analysis from Ben Decker, CEO of the digital investigations firm Memetica.

According to Kelly, the scheme started when Jacob Wohl, a far-right internet personality, messaged Kelly on Instagram. "Do you want to be part of a political operation?" the message said, according to a copy reviewed by CNN.

-snip-

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/05/media/anatomy-smear-pete-buttigieg-fake-story/index.html

[J_William_Ryan]

1. Hence the reprehensible right.

[Rhiannon12866]

2. Good grief!

Absolutely nothing is below these smear merchants - and the frightening thing is that there are people out there who swallow these ridiculous stories whole...

[DesertRat]

3. The fake story is out there

How many read it, passed it on still believe it?