On Sunday Texas Governor Greg Abbott earnestly tweeted out a link to an article about the country megastar Garth Brooks apparently being booed off stage in his home state. “Go woke. Go broke,” he captioned it. “Garth called his conservative fans ‘assholes’ [sic] Good job Texas.”
The governor swiftly deleted the post, which could have been because he realised there was no city of Hambriston in Texas, the story was credited to a “Flagg Eagleton — Patriot”, and the masthead publishing it was the perfectly titled The Dunning-Kruger Times.
Abbott’s unchecked fake news is only the last in a grand history of public figures sharing information that may seem too good to be true, but only because it is.
- In 2019, then-environment minister Angus Taylor shared a faked Top Gear segment in attempt to attack the opposition’s electric vehicles policy;
- Taylor appears to have a bit of an issue checking on the provenance of the evidence he uses to attack his opponents — that same year he gave what turned out to be forged documents to The Daily Telegraph to attack Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Taylor has denied the documents were the work of anyone in his office;
- The Herald Sun reported the shocking exposé that a “private schoolgirl” in Melbourne was identifying as a cat — that it was the latest iteration of a repeatedly debunked hoax which had already made its way around the world didn’t stop the likes of Cory Bernardi and United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet leaping on it;
- One could dedicate an entire article to public figures who fail to realise The Onion is not strictly factual. Our favourites would be the Republican congressman who shared the piece “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex (reporting that Kansas now offers an abortion clinic with “coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants and retail outlets, a three-storey nightclub, and a 10-screen multiplex theatre”) and Chinese outlet People’s Daily Online writing up The Onion‘s poll that found North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was the sexiest man alive;
- Historian and then-editor of Quadrant Keith Windschuttle, who had always loved to swing at left-wing academics for apparent fabrication, got caught publishing an elaborate hoax article which Crikey revealed relied on “false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes”.
- The New York Post claimed in May that 20 homeless veterans had been kicked out of hotels in New York to make room for Central American migrants. Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley furiously elevated the piece, without any fact-checking or asking the accused hotels for comment. The story was untrue.
Wait, Fox News elevating a questionable story? That doesn’t sound right …
Have we forgotten any choice hoaxes that politicians picked up and ran with? Email us at boss@crikey.com.au with ‘Hoaxes’ in the subject line.
