New York Daily News reporter Shaun King was taken in by a parody Twitter account this week claiming to belong to Ammon Bundy, the anti-government activist who staged a takeover of a federal building last weekend.
The fake Twitter account, @Ammon_Bundy, said early Wednesday morning, “We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did. We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom.”
The actual Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan, spearheaded a protest this weekend that saw armed activists occupy a federal building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Bundy and his cohort say they are protesting the federal government’s treatment of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were found guilty in 2012 of setting fire to 130 acres of land in 2001 to cover up poaching activities.
Upset that the Nevada rancher had supposedly compared himself to the actions of a civil rights icon, King lashed out in an op-ed that blasted the “privileged” Nevada rancher for his apparent overreach.
“Dear Ammon Bundy, An apple is not a doorknob. A football is not a computer. A pencil is not a telephone,” King wrote in a now-heavily amended article. “Those things are alike in that they are all nouns in the English language, but that’s about as far as the similarities go.”
“Ammon, you are no Rosa Parks. You are among the most privileged men in the world. Nobody is really even forcefully asking you to leave, man. Do you even have a job? Please do us all a favor — get some sleep and try to put your phone in airplane mode tonight,” he added.
As it turns out, however, the real Ammon Bundy doesn’t even operate a Twitter account, according to MSNBC reporter Tony Dokoupil, who is on the ground in Oregon.
“As Ammon Bundy and company’s occupation of federal land enters a fifth day, a note for all: he’s not on twitter. @Ammon_Bundy is not him,” the reporter said on social media.
He added again in a separate note, “People, Ammon Bundy is not operating a twitter account. I stood with him last night as tweets supposedly from him went out.”
It appears Dokoupil was one of the very few in media who made an effort to verify the authenticity of the fake account, which sent its first tweet on Jan. 3.
The NY Daily News and King have since scrambled to cover their tracks, deleting tweets and amending headlines so as soften the embarrassment of their obvious mistake.
The original headline to King’s article read, “KING: Bundy comparing himself to Rosa Parks is a joke.”
The story has since undergone a series of headline changes, including “KING: Bundy comparing himself to Rosa Parks has to be a joke,” and “The extremely privileged Ammon Bundy comparing himself to Rosa Parks is not only offensive, it’s laughable,” so that the current version now reads, “KING: The Ammon Bundy tweet comparing militia leader to Rosa Parks is not only offensive, it’s laughable.”
King has also scrubbed all mentions of his article from his Twitter account, including a note that read, “My open letter to @Ammon_Bundy. I think you accidentally sleep tweeted that you are like Rosa Parks.”
However, despite multiple attempts to walk back the story, the NY Daily News is still reporting on its social media feed that Bundy has been suspended from Twitter. That story has not been corrected.
A separate NY Daily News article, originally titled “Ammon Bundy compares militia’s fight to the heroism of Rosa Parks,” has since been amended – with no corrections or editors note – to reflect that the Ammon Bundy Twitter account is likely a fake.
The NY Daily News is not alone in failing to verify whether the Twitter account actually belonged to the 40-year-old Nevada rancher. Salon, the New Republic, Talking Points Memo, The Root, Mediaite, Time, the Washington Post and USA Today, which also scrubbed the story from its social media feed, all reported incorrectly this week that Bundy had compared himself to Rosa Parks.
An embarrassed Salon issued a correction Wednesday afternoon, saying that, “It turns out the tweet was from a hoax account, but given the fact that these geniuses were previously pleading with the public to send them the snacks they forgot to pack, the error is understandable.”
The person behind the fake account seemed to take pleasure in his joke, and tweeted several gloating messages Wednesday afternoon at the journalists who fell for his trick.
“Hey @ShaunKing how does it feel to be made a fool of by me again?” he laughed on social media. “Now that I proved the MSM will fall for anything you can all follow me on my other [account].”
King did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
