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Jon Greenberg
By Jon Greenberg April 6, 2018

Fake news says CNN "pulled the plug" during YouTube shooting coverage

The day after a woman opened fire at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., Facebook users flagged a post on the Daily Vine website with the headline, "Whoa! YouTube witness makes shocking admission on live TV! CNN pulls plug immediately!"

The "admission" in the post was an employee at YouTube telling a Fox News affiliate reporter, "I didn’t have a gun on me, but I wish I did." Here’s a screenshot of the video.

It’s important to note the time in the upper left corner: 2:03 p.m. Pacific time.

Now, here’s the screenshot of CNN in the Daily Vine piece.

Featured Fact-check

The time stamp is 1:46 p.m. Pacific time, or about 15 minutes before the clip that CNN purportedly masked with a faux breakdown in its video feed.

So the clips don’t match up.

In addition, the clip of the eyewitness appeared on Fox News, not CNN.

Just to be complete, we used the real-time television recording service TVEyes to watch CNN’s coverage for the full minute of 1:46 p.m. PT. The network was interviewing an expert named Josh Campbell, and there was no technical interruption, and no break in the video feed.

What we have seems to be nothing more than some basic use of photo editing and a completely false headline.

This is a fine example of Pants on Fire fake news.

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PolitiFact rating logo PolitiFact Rating:
Pants on Fire
"YouTube witness makes shocking admission on live TV. CNN pulls plug immediately"
On a fake news website
Wednesday, April 4, 2018

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