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David Hogg not at school during shooting? Bloggers spread misinformation
Multiple internet bloggers falsely claimed that student David Hogg was not on the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when the school shooting happened Feb. 14.
The inaccurate claims surfaced after CBS News produced "39 Days," a documentary of several Stoneman Douglas High School students including Hogg. At the beginning of the video, Hogg, described as a student journalist, explained his immediate actions following the shooting that left 17 people dead.
Some bloggers took the 14-second soundbite to insinuate that Hogg wasn’t actually at school when the shooting took place.
"In a recently leaked excerpt of a CBS documentary, David Hogg admits he was at home during the Parkland shooting," reads the opening of a story on Squawker.org.
"David Hogg admits he wasn’t at school during Parkland school shooting," says a headline on DailyPresser.com.
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None of those claims are true.
The inaccurate posts say that Hogg’s comments directly contradict statements in a Feb. 15 Time Magazine interview. Hogg said he heard a gunshot while sitting in an AP environmental science class around 2:30 p.m.
The blogs juxtaposed that statement with the following statement from Hogg in the CBS documentary: "On the day of the shooting, I got my camera and got on my bike and rode as fast as I could three miles from my house to the school to get as much video and to get as many interviews as I could because I knew that this could not be another mass shooting."
People questioned how Hogg could be at school when the shooting started and also be riding his bike three miles to get his camera. And if Hogg really did leave school; how did he get back on to campus if the area was on lockdown?
The timeline presented in this way is a bit confusing, but the blogs didn’t try to fairly settle the seeming discrepancy.
Here’s what happened.
Hogg was at the school during the shooting. Hogg shot a video on his cellphone while taking cover in a classroom closet.
Sometime after that, he went home.
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At around 6 p.m., Hogg went back to get interviews, according to Vox.
"The evening after the shooting, Hogg says, he biked up to the school, where the media was still camped out," the article says. "This time, he put himself in front of the camera, making his first — but not final — plea for an end to mass shootings."
Regardless of this information, other conservative news websites including InfoWars and RedState jumped the gun and reported that the CBS interview "cast doubt" on Hogg’s whereabouts during the school shooting.
Sometime after the original stories, both websites issued "updates" on their stories to say that the CBS video included Hogg’s quote without context.
But not every site did.
"It appears that the problem was that CBS included a very confusing quote without context," wrote conservative Florida writer Sarah Rumpf, author of the errant RedState story. "Hogg was on campus during the shooting and returned several hours later to interview people across the street."
Claims that Hogg was not at school during the shooting are not based in reality. We rate them Pants on Fire!
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Our Sources
Time, A Student Started Filming During the Florida School Shooting. He Hasn't Stopped, Feb. 15, 2018
CBS News, "39 Days": How Parkland shooting survivors turned grief into action, March 24, 2018
Vox, Florida shooting survivor explains how his generation can force a change on guns, Feb. 20, 2018
PolitiFact, Why you shouldn't believe claims that Stoneman Douglas students are crisis actors, Feb. 21, 2018
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David Hogg not at school during shooting? Bloggers spread misinformation
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