Facebook labeled The Federalist’s reporting related to Haitian migrants hunting geese in Springfield, Ohio as “false information” Tuesday based on a “fact check” from a Chinese-funded organization.
“People who repeatedly share false information might have their posts moved lower in News Feed so other people are less likely to see them,” read a warning from Facebook slapped onto an article published last week. The story featured an audio recording of a phone call to police wherein a concerned local reported four Haitian migrants each carrying a goose near downtown Springfield.
“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hand,” the caller told the public services dispatcher in the audio recording. “I’m time crunching here, and I saw that, I’m like, ‘Yeah this has got to be reported.’”
The recording of the phone call was embedded in the story and can be listened to below:
Facebook, however, suppressed the story based on an independent “fact check” by a group called Lead Stories, which is funded by tech elites in Silicon Valley and Beijing. Meta and the Chinese-owned company ByteDance pay Lead Stories to fact check stories on their platforms.
“Police Audio Does NOT Confirm Haitians Hunting Geese In Springfield, Ohio — No Verifying Evidence,” Tuesday’s headline read.
The so-called “fact check” faulted the story for implying “the audio recording of a call made to the Clark County sheriff’s department non-emergency line on August 26, 2024, confirms that the caller’s report was accurate.”
“While the audio confirms that a call was made, it does not prove that what was reported truly happened,” Lead Stories reported. “The caller stated that four Haitian people, two men and two women, were each carrying a goose and got into a gray Toyota Tacoma near the intersection of Warder and Water streets in Springfield, Ohio. The caller did not specify if the geese being carried were alive or dead, domestic or wild.”
The article went on to cite a statement from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) repeatedly used by corporate outlets to dismiss reports about Haitians hunting geese in Springfield. Despite the agency revealing a second such report made in March, the ODNR said “no supporting evidence was found of wildlife being illegally removed from the park in either case.”
The statement, however, doesn’t mean what the callers reported did not happen. The suspects in both incidents had left the scene by the time law enforcement arrived. Both cases were also reported long before Springfield became a national emblem of communities overwhelmed by immigration.
Facebook’s censorship comes just weeks after company CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to Congress the tech giant would not engage in the same election interference that Silicon Valley did in 2020. In an August letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg admitted to suppressing select coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the coronavirus pandemic at the behest of government censors.
“We made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
