New phenomenon: In covering Florida shootings, reporters find themselves hampered by fake tweets

Reporters were  confronted with a disturbing obstacle in trying to cover the shootings at a Florida high school recently. They found themselves the target of false tweets that assumed their identities  and substituted fake text for the originals. Alex Harris of the Miami Herald discovered someone made a fake screen shot of one of her alleged tweets asking for photos of dead bodies or if anyone knew the shooter was white. The assaults escalated to the point that after the fake tweet appeared on a white nationalist message board, she was accused of being racist and Jewish.(Poynter Institute, February 15, 2018, by Daniel Funke)

Some tweets criticized Harris for trying to contact students while they were still in danger which she says was vital in covering the story. But she admitted that the criticism reflected a legitimate concern. In addition to fake tweets, there was an onslaught of fake news stories. Alliance for Securing Democracy discovered that a Russian disinformation group pushed some of the stories. (USA TODAY, February 15, 2018, by Mike Snider)