The woman whose Facebook post sparked baseless widespread rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pet cats in her small Ohio town says she had no direct knowledge of any such incident and regrets passing fourth-hand hearsay on social media.
NEW: The woman behind a Facebook post that helped spark baseless rumors about Haitians eating pets tells @NBCNews she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is filled with regret: “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen.” https://t.co/qVng2vyQfw
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 14, 2024
From NBC News:
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.
Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.
The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported.
Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment.
Media watchdog NewsGuard identified and spoke to the two people central to the claim: Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who wrote the original Facebook post, and Kimberly Newton, the neighbor who had provided her with a third-hand account of the rumor, making Lee’s social media post a fourth-hand account: the alleged acquaintance/cat owner; Newton’s friend; Newton; and Lee, who posted it on Facebook. Lee went on to tell NBC News her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and part of the LGBTQ community. “I’m not a racist. Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat.” An exclusive NewsGuard report reveals that the explosive claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing and eating pets was ultimately based on triple hearsay…
— NewsGuard (@NewsGuardRating) September 12, 2024
Discover more from The Randy Report
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.