Far-left website Raw Story was caught using an image of white stay-at-home protesters to illustrate an article about a black terror suspect who allegedly planned to kill police officers.
The controversy surrounded an article by Raw Story writer and former ShareBlue pundit Matthew Chapman entitled Ohio man arrested for plot to kidnap police and stockpile their weapons for an ‘uprising’.
The article was originally posted on both Raw Story and Twitter with an image showing three white men wearing tactical gear. The clear implication in using the image suggested that one of the men in the photograph was the terror suspect.
However, according to Shutterstock’s original description of the image, it shows members of the Yellowstone Militia of Billings “protesting Montana’s stay at home orders.”
The actual suspect, 20-year-old Christian Stanley Ferguson, who was arrested “on charges that he concocted an elaborate plan to kidnap law enforcement officers, stockpile their weapons, and build up an arsenal to ‘start an uprising,'” looks like this.
After the discrepancy was pointed out by Mike Cernovich and others, Raw Story deleted the tweet, pulled the original image and replaced it with an image of police tape.
They changed to police tape now pic.twitter.com/aNwFhRvKeh
— ? J (@J_H_5) May 13, 2020
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The Raw Story article still does not contain an image of Christian Stanley Ferguson’s mugshot.
For a story about a planned terrorist attack, @RawStory used this image of men who lawfully protested in Montana.
They had no connection to the planned attack.
I found the image here:https://t.co/olJOYm1bjZ
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 13, 2020
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“Why did you use a stock image from lawful protesters in a story about domestic terrorism?” Cernovich asked Chapman, who didn’t respond. “Do you realize you just falsely tied several men to a planned terrorist attack?”
Hi @fawfulfan
Why did you use a stock image from lawful protesters in a story about domestic terrorism?
Do you realize you just falsely tied several men to a planned terrorist attack?
Here's the image you used vs. suspect pic. pic.twitter.com/d91GVG6gyV
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 13, 2020
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“Lawsuit central heading your way!” Cernovich told Raw Story.
“Mr. Ferguson is innocent until proven guilty and judging by the affidavit and the FBI’s track record of entrapping the low IQ and the mentally ill, there’s a good chance the FBI and their informants just entrapped him,” writes Chris Menahan.
“From a liberal perspective, Raw Story could have taken the angle that this was the FBI oppressing a young, black, underprivileged PoC but I guess liberals worship the FBI now and think rural white folks with no systemic power are the oppressors of all mankind so they took a different path.”
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