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  • 2018-09-24 (xsd:date)
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  • Did John Elway Fire Denver Broncos Players for Kneeling During the National Anthem? (en)
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  • Sunday, 23 September 2018, saw the third major round of games in the National Football League's 2018 season. Against the background of an ongoing controversy over the decision by some players and staff to protest against racial injustice during the playing of the national anthem, one notorious junk news web site sought to make hay, publishing no fewer than seven entirely false protest-related stories that day. America's Last Line of Defense posted fabricated stories which claimed that: the Federal Communications Commission had fined the NFL because Pittsburgh Steelers' wide receiver Antonio Brown had knelt during the anthem; that white and black Buffalo Bills players had had a locker room brawl over the anthem protests; that a fictional black Pittsburgh Steelers player named Jude Black (described in the article as a kneeling thug) had attacked a referee after receiving a penalty for protesting during the national anthem; that New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichek had fined another fictional black player (Tyrone Blackman) for kneeling; that Patriots owner Robert Kraft had personally walked onto the field of play and fired two of his players for not standing during the anthem; and that the Dallas Cowboys had demoted players who kneeled during the anthem the previous week. However, the article which prompted the most queries from our readers and was the most shared on Facebook was one that claimed Denver Broncos general manager John Elway had walked on to the field before the team's game against the Baltimore Ravens and personally fired three players who disobeyed an order not to kneel during the anthem. Under the headline BREAKING: Broncos VP John Elway Storms Field, Fires 3 Kneeling Players on the Spot, the article stated: None of these events took place. The Broncos have no players named Mavius Malphner, Ladamian Brown, or DeShaq Darq. Like everything published by America's Last Line of Defense, the article is fake. However, some readers mistakenly believed it to be authentic, as demonstrated by the many earnest comments on the Facebook page of America's Last Line of Defense. That Facebook page and website (currently operating at the URL trumpbetrayed.us) are part of a network of junk news sites that engage in political trolling, much of it racially-charged and inflammatory, presented as satire. (en)
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