Fake News: Flight Crew Did NOT Take A Knee Leaving New Orleans Saints Stranded On Runway

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Fake/satire website Freedum Junkshun posted an article titled "Flight Crew Takes A Knee And Walks Off, Leaving New Orleans Saints Stranded On Runway" which opened:

The New Orleans Saints made the mistake of once again disrespecting our veterans, our country and our flag. After an embarrassing opening to a game with the worst ratings in Saints' history, the players and coaches learned that their actions have consequences.

Both the pilot and co-pilot of the Boeing 737 the Saints use to travel are combat-hardened American heroes. They flew sorties over Baghdad with Saddam's best weapons firing back. They fought with their lives for your freedom and watched many of their friends die. Today they took a stand for those brave souls:

"We couldn't be a party to the disrespect. We waited until we were cleared and last off the runway for the night , walked out of the cockpit, took a knee and deplaned. They're not going anywhere until tomorrow."

The image used with the article apparently was taken from some flight simulator game.

saintsknee.jpg

Compare with the likely orignal which we found on Pinterest:

Freedum Junkshun carries a satire disclaimer at the bottom of the page which reads:

We believe that there is nothing more precious than the mind of an aging conservative. Here we gather a boatload of bullhonkey, works of pure satirical fiction, to give the fist-shakers of the world a reason to hate. Reality is often in the eye of the beholder. You won't find any of it here.

Join the fun in the comments on our Facebook page where you too can watch David Hasselhoff running over someone's poodle magically transformed into a crime against humanity by Barack Obama or yet another murder the Clintons got away with.

The owner/writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites such as asamericanasapplepie.org, ourlandofthefree.com and thelastlineofdefense.org. Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll".

Blair's articles frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up.

If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.

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  Maarten Schenk

Maarten Schenk is the co-founder and COO/CTO of Lead Stories and an expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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