The fake-news-as-satire website The Last Line of Defense posted an article today titled: "BREAKING: Conservative Icon Ted Nugent Killed In Hunting Accident" which claims the entertainer died in a hunting-related accident. The fake story opened:
Ted Nugent, 70's rocker turned hunting guide and conservative icon, was shot and killed early this morning in a tragic hunting accident. While setting up his tree stand just outside a wildlife reserve in Montana, Nugent was fired on and hit in the chest by a hunter with a scope nearly a quarter of a mile away who believed he was a brown bear.
UPDATE: Video confirmation from Ted Nugent that he is alive.
The article was accompanied by a screenshot appearing to be from tv station WESH 2:
The image is actually a modified and cropped version of a screencap from a story from January 20th 2016 about a real hunting accident.
Fans of "The Nuge" can relax because The Resistance: The Last Line of Defense is a fake news website that carries following disclaimer on its about page:
DISCLAIMER: The Resistance may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don't necessarily exist. All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real.
The site also tends to include nonsensical phrases or insults hints in the list of "categories" under the article titles:
According to Buzzfeed the site was originally meant to troll conservatives with over the top satirical articles but now appears to be used as a 'source' by a large network of actual fake news sites (not related to the original creator) that all repost the same articles mentioning it as the source but not acknowlediging the satire disclaimer. This causes many people to believe the fake stories especially when they are being shared on social media where all context is removed and only the title, image and description remain. Sites in the network appear to include:
- American News
- Newsbreakshere
- Amposts
- Conservative Info corner
- Conservative Army
- Open Magazines
- True Trumpers
- Blue Vision News
- Conservative Flash News
- Red Country
- Newsfeedhunter
The story has indeed popped up on several of the sites already and as the Trendolizer graph at the end of this article shows there are hundreds of people already sharing it. If you want to reassure fans of Ted Nugent who fell victim to this hoax just point them to this article.
