Was an 51-year-old explosives expert named Marty Daughtry from Greenville, North Carolina arrested after blowing up the wrong building? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian entertainment website that makes a living by publishing fictional stories often involving weird crimes, bizarre sex acts or strange accidents. It is not real.
The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on January 16, 2019 titled "Drunk demolition worker arrested after blowing up the wrong building" (archived here) which opened:
An explosive expert was arrested this morning in Greenville, North Carolina after he set more than 5 tons of TNT in the wrong building and blew it up.
According to his colleagues, 51-year old Marty Daughtry was visibly intoxicated this morning when he showed up to work, but that was not unusual for the demolition team foreman.
Recognized as an expert in his domain, Mr. Daughtry has led several major demolition projects over the years.
He is known to have a severe alcohol problem but is usually able to get the job done, so his coworkers were still confident when they decided to let him manage the demolition of a 6-story apartment building.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Drunk demolition worker arrested after blowing up the wrong building
An explosive expert was arrested this morning in Greenville, North Carolina after he set more than 5 tons of TNT in the wrong building and blew it up. According to his colleagues, 51-year old Marty Daughtry was visibly intoxicated this morning when he showed up to work, but that was not unusual for
But the man, pictured in the story is actually Robert Brown, a Nashville man already famous in 2015 for being arrested so many times:
Nashville man arrested nearly 500 times since 1994
NASHVILLE -- Police say a Tennessee man has been arrested nearly 500 times, almost always for public intoxication. The 492 charges filed against Robert Brown span from 1994 to this past Tuesday, when drivers spotted him seated and allegedly drinking near a highway ramp. When police arrived, Brown was still allegedly drinking from a 40 oz.
The website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:
World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.
It is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.
Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes worldnewsdailyreport.com as:
A website that publishes hoaxes and made-up stories that are often widely shared and mistaken for news.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
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