Amanda Seitz, an Associated Press journalist. According to her Twitter profile, her assigned beat for AP is “disinfo.” On LinkedIn, she’s listed as an AP fact-checker. I want to avoid spreading disinformation or getting facts wrong, but I will assume “disinfo” is shorthand for disinformation. And “fact-checker” means she checks facts.
After having read her latest article, which she claims is factual for AP I now have my thoughts.
Her October 27th article is titled: America ‘on fire’: Facebook watched as Trump ignited hate.
I might be a bit pollyannaish, but I assumed I’d read a factual report on what Trump did or said that ignited the fire(s) which consumed America last year. It wasn’t so.
Seitz began:
“The reports of hateful and violent posts on Facebook started pouring in on the night of May 28 last year, soon after then-President Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that looters in Minneapolis would be shot.”
She continued.
But it wasn’t until after Trump posted about Floyd’s death that the reports of violence and hate speech increased “rapidly” on Facebook across the country, an internal company analysis of the ex-president’s social media post reveals.
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd and I won’t let that happen,” Trump wrote at 9:53 a.m. on May 28 from his Twitter and Facebook accounts. “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts the shooting starts!”
However, according to The New York Times (Yahoo News), Variety and any other source, Trump made his comments on May 29, and not in the morning of May 28, as stated by Yahoo News and Variety. Additionally, according to the primary source — Facebook itself –, Trump’s post was made at 1:10 a.m. Eastern on May 29. That time is revealed by hovering over the “about a year ago” time frame that’s given on Trump’s Facebook post, which is embedded in — wait for it — Seitz’s AP article. Since I am in the Pacific Time Zone, hovering above the post will reveal the time in Pacific Time.
It is crucial to keep track of the timeline. It should have been important to the AP “fact-checker.”
Floyd was killed on May 25, 2012. Protests had grown exponentially by the following day and each day since. The next day, protests grew throughout the nation. Minneapolis was the scene of looting by May 27th. In St Louis, a man died as people set fires and tried to loot a FedEx truck, all linked to Floyd’s death. Los Angeles had roads blocked, and looting was taking place in all major cities.
On May 28, the Third Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department, was set on fire.
Minnesota’s governor activated the National Guard, saying:
“The situation in Minneapolis, is no longer, in any way, about the murder of George Floyd. It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear, and disrupting our great cities.”
Many cities across the country had already caught fire.
But Trump had yet to write his “looting and shooting” post. Trump published it the next morning on May 29. He was roundly criticized for writing “when the looting starts the shooting starts.” Later the same day, he clarified what he meant and wrote:
“looting leads to shooting,” and the warning was meant as a “fact, not as a statement.”
“Looting leads to shooting, and that’s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night – or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump). May 29, 2020
(Trump tweeted after midnight on the east coast – May 29)
This sentence further illustrates Seitz’s claim that Trump posted on Facebook (and incited violence), May 28.
“Offline, the next day, protests — some of which turned violent — engulfed nearly every U.S. city, big and small.”
The sentence contains a link for an AP article that was posted May 29th. That linked article never mentions Trump’s social media posts, because he (or staff) had yet (or just posted) to Facebook. His tweets were only made in the morning of May 29, He followed up his tweet with a Facebook post. This was probably done by staff. Further, the sentence clearly points a finger and infers blame on Trump’s Facebook post. This refers to violence that occurred after 9:53 PM on May 28. Trump was yet to make a post. Seitz can’t cite evidence of Trump supporters violently taking to the streets on May 28, because he had yet to post to Facebook.
Even if Seitz didn’t “mean” Just May 28 and was linking all subsequent violence to Trump’s Facebook post, a reasonable reader could assume that Trump’s post caused actual physical violence and/or property damage — yet Seitz offers no evidence it did. Why? Likely because in the 15 months since Trump’s Facebook post (and his later correction), there is no evidence proffered by Seitz to support her conclusion. Is Trump responsible for causing a group of Trump supporters to take over the streets? Seitz infers it. Perhaps Seitz will write a follow-up article with facts, citing actual criminal cases or arrests of Trump supporters or, perhaps photos of rioters wearing MAGA hats, or maybe Trump flag-wavers filling the streets in response to protestors-turned-rioters? The October 27th article by Seitz offers no such information.
Her evidence may be anecdotal. Or made up out of wholecloth, as Jacob Frey (the Mayor of Minneapolis) might have suggested. On May 30, Frey saw Trump’s May 29 social media posts as a pretext to blame someone, anyone, for the riots, so long as they were connected to George Floyd. Frey described the people who were burning down his hometown as white supremacists. While bunkered far away from his flaming city center, one precinct burned to the ground by Floyd rioters, he threw blame at “white supremacists,” tweeting:
“We are now confronting white supremacists, members of organized crime, out-of-state instigators, and possibly even foreign actors to destroy and destabilize our city and our region,”
Frey tweeted that on May 30, 2020. He has not provided any evidence to support his claim. He still hasn’t. He didn’t stop the rioting that continued in his hometown. This rioting spread throughout the nation and to many other countries. None of the riots or billions of dollars in damage were ever linked to Trump’s Facebook post. It was not then and it isn’t now.
Seitz’s thesis is clear. Trump’s Facebook posts caused violence.
Twice she hyperlinked an apparent source for the “Facebook” papers. They weren’t. Here is a link to an assortment of articles. Trump is only discussed in her article. Her hyperlink was hers. It is not clear if there was a link between Trump and the Facebook documents.
Her “evidence” is an opinion of Lanier Holt, a professor of communications at Ohio State. Holt stated:
“When people look back at the role Facebook played, they won’t say Facebook caused it, but Facebook was certainly the megaphone,” said Lanier Holt, a communications professor at Ohio State University. “I don’t think there’s any way they can get out of saying that they exacerbated the situation.”
In 2019 Holt told Michigan State students at the School of Communication Arts and Sciences:
“Very little of what we know about the world today comes from reality.”
Excluding Lanier Holt’s opinion, her article lacks any citable evidence Trump’s Facebook post did any more than foment angry Facebook posts. Based on Seitz’s tortured logic one could conclude that her article gave everyone a headache because it gave me one.
AP should verify the fact-checkers.
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