• Fox News, twitterdom and social media duped by fake Putin quote

    wompwahYesterday,  Russian television news anchor Remi Maalouf tweeted:

    #Putin : to forgive the terrorists is ip to God but to send them to him is up to me #ISIS #Syria #Moscow pic.twitter.com/hmTdvnb25C
    — Remi Maalouf (@RemiMaalouf)

    The too-good-to-be-true quote struck a chord with many in the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris. Among them was Fox News. Fox re-posted this content from a website called Barstool Sports, a reputable website that currently has other important news pieces at the top of its feed, such as “Better Know A Camel Toe” and “Guess that Ass“.

    Remi Maalouf later revealed she had seen the quote posted on Facebook and then tweeted it. The quote might be fake, but the insight into how the media operates is quite genuine. I am not surprised this would fool a lot of people, but professional news organizations should know better because this isn’t the first time this fake quote has been falsely attributed to someone. All it took to know this was 10 seconds of Googling.

    Did anyone really say this? 

    Probably not. Snopes.com has previously reported this quote being attributed to General Norman Schwarzkopf in 2001. He never had said it (until prompted to later during an interview, anyway). The quote famously appears in the 2004 film Man of Fire, said by Denzel Washington’s character:

    Which should have made it a more obvious fake. It is not certain where this quote originated. Snopes speculates it dates back to the 80’s:

    It’s possible the current “arrange the meeting” quote is a misremembering of a pithy saying common to ROTC training in the 1980s: “Your enemy’s duty is to die in defense of his country. Your duty is to see that your enemy does his duty.”

    This will almost surely pop up again, attributed to new generations of perceived badasses.

    Category: Critical ThinkingfeaturedFeatured Incskepticism

  • Article by: Edward Clint

    Ed Clint is an evolutionary psychologist, co-founder of Skeptic Ink, and USAF veteran.