The springfield ohio city manager speaking out about misinformation it comes after former president trump echoed a false rumor about immigrants eating pets there at tuesday night’s debate listen
-his springfield they’re eating the dogs the people that came in there eating that cats they’re eating they’re eating the pits of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country and it’s a shame i just want to clarify hear you bring up springfield ohio and a b c news did reach
-out to the city manager there he told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community
-and that city manager and on tells nbc news quote it is disappointing that some of the narrative surrounding our city have been skewed by misinformation on social media and further amplified by political rhetoric in the current highly charged presidential election cycle a b c a senior reporter emanuel cold saliba covers misinformation forests and she joins me now for more on this
-mineral officials in springfield say law enforcement is actually now investigating a bomb threat at the city’s commission office this morning i want to be clear we don’t know whether this threat is specifically tied to that false rumor or the former president’s comments at the debate but you say there is precedent of misinformation like this leading to threats of i
-violence or actual violence
-absolutely some of us may think that this is just a harmless rumor but in fact it’s not we have a long history of examples that show that this type of misinformation can have real world consequences and their reports local reports right now of haitian families in that community and springfield being choose
-scared to send their children to school
-there are being intimidated some have had their car vandalized and summer considering now leaving the community even if they’ve been there for six plus years and so it’s having real world consequences we saw this happening recently in the uk where and a tragic tragic incident was taken and
-the same scenario happened online it was in flames and news for political purposes and then it lead to riots to violent riots so we know this has consequences on the ground and it can be harmful to people and that trump’s about eating pets have long been used to stoked fears of immigrants so how did these false
-rumors start and had headed they reach this level where you’re hearing about them on the national stage it’s a bit long and complex but i’ll try and break it down simply essentially we believe that it’s started on a local facebook group a small rumor posted by someone allegedly from the community same they had heard from
-a neighbor his friend’s daughter the her cat had disappeared and that it has she had founded she had found it hanging from a tree so a a rumor heard you know by from a third party the sister of the have a neighbor of the him so hard to stand up then that
-posts circulated on x a was pushed out by a conservative account and on the platform huge it known as as twitter formerly known as twitter a kind of blew up there along with an other image of a man holding a goose i tracked down that image it’s a real image but it was taken in columbus
-as in july and the man said he had no indication that the man he took the photo of was a haitian immigrants and and so it’s all of this sort of visual evidence being used to prop up a rumor but the visual evidence has been debunked there was also a video that social media user
-or as were pointing to body cam footage you might have seen this cross your feeds you are you know our viewers at home and it showed a woman who was being arrested for allegedly having killed and eaten a cat this was taken in canton not in springfield which is three hours away and the woman was a us citizen and so
-it’s or again these three pieces
-of of visual of of content that are being used as visual evidence that are false that have been debunked and since this a started in on and during the weekend there.