Breitbart.com has built quite a reputation for being unreliable. Aside from clickbait headlines that don’t live up what’s inside the article, the conservative outlet has been duped by fake and satire news stories numerous times, and it’s happened again.
In early July, Breitbart published an article referring to Sarah Palin’s comments that said “paid anti-Trump protesters show presidential candidate Donald Trump is creating jobs even before taking office.”
“We’ve been telling [Trump] he should hold his rallies at construction sites,” Palin said, “You know protesters aren’t going to show up at a job site. Did you know some of those rebel rousers, they’re actually paid protesters. So there you go, not even president yet and our guy’s already creating jobs.”
Not a bad line from the half-term governor. But the Breitbart piece, penned by Michelle Moons, latched onto the quip and cited a Fox News report about a Craiglist ad that allegedly offered “paid positions to protest a Trump rally.” In addition to sourcing Fox, Breitbart included another “ABC News” report about a person who allegedly answered the ad and was paid $3,500 for showing up to protest
From the Breitbart article:
Fox News Insider reported on a Craigslist ad soliciting for anti-Trump protesters, allegedly posted by supporters of Bernie Sanders.
One alleged Arizona protester said he received $3,500 after answering a Craigslist ad that led to him protesting Trump’s Fountain Hills, Arizona rally according to ABC News. He said that after protesting the event he received a check from “Women Are The Future.”
The story itself doesn’t add up. According to Snopes, multiple ads have been posted on Craiglist claiming to seek paid protesters to show up at campaign events, “yet those ads are always quickly taken down, and none of them has yet proved to be anything other than a hoax.”
But digging the hole further, the “ABC News” story that claimed the person received $3,500 for protesting wasn’t from ABC at all – it was a fake news article from a fake news site that appropriated the ABC logo in an effort to dupe gullible readers, a tactic increasingly seen on the Internet.
As of August 8, the Breitbart article still hasn’t been updated to exclude the fake source.
An archived version of the Breitbart piece can be found here in the event that the original article is updated.
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