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On 26 October 2017, FreedumJunkshun.com, a web site that labels itself satire, published a story reporting that the black soldier killed in an ambush in Niger earlier in the month was a deserter. Many who read the article did not detect the purported humor, prompting readers to inquire whether the story was true. Citing only a fake passage from right-wing web site Breitbart.com, Freedum Junkshun reported: In case noting the web site is self-proclaimed satire is not enough to convince the ever-outraged or skeptical, we confirmed there is no evidence whatsoever to support claims that Sgt. Johnson was a deserter. However, as always, the sheer lack of evidence has not stopped the false information from proliferating across junk sites on the Internet. It is true that United States Army sergeant La David Johnson, 25, was killed in action — along with three others — in a 4 October 2017 ambush in Niger while on patrol with a company of twelve Special Forces soldiers and their Nigerien partners. Johnson died fighting, along with Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright. It is also true he was African-American, while the others were white. But that is where the facts end with this story, whose author apparently felt the ethnicity and recent violent death of the serviceman were ripe for humor. Sgt. Johnson became the center of an ugly political spat when Florida Congresswoman Federica Wilson, who overheard a phone call made to widow Myeshia Johnson by President Donald Trump, said publicly that Trump's attempt at condolence was insensitive and made the young woman cry. The President responded by asserting first that Wilson's account of the conversation, then Mrs. Johnson's account, were not true. It was his second high-profile tangle with a Gold Star family. As with many recent incidents involving high emotion and entrenched partisan flame throwing, the fake news purveyors immediately latched on. Of course, any incident involving the three combustible topics of President Trump's running Twitter commentary, race and the death of a U.S. soldier is ripe for exploitation, and although it did ignite a firestorm of controversy, casting unfounded aspersions on the actions and character of the fallen soldier has remained off limits — until 2017. We reached out to the Department of Defense to confirm the information was false. Major Audricia Harris responded by e-mail: We also confirmed with Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow that the passage attributed to Breitbart was falsified. He told us by e-mail: We sent a list of questions to Christopher Blair, an apparent Internet troll who uses numerous pseudonyms and runs Freedum Junkshun along with other satire sites and Facebook pages. He declined to comment on the topic, only saying: In May 2017, Blair gave an interview to PunditFact in which he said the strategy of his operation was to mess with conservatives. But Michelle Amazeen, assistant professor of mass communication at Boston University, told us even though the stories are labeled as satire there is a good chance people will not notice; with an onslaught of digital information competing for limited attention, readers are very selective about where they direct their attention. Even worse, she said, such stories can bleed into the mainstream, because in the online media environment, actual fake news sites can pick up satire articles without the disclaimer, and partisan web sites are more susceptible to being influenced by fake content, seemingly gaining credibility with each iteration until it is finally reported as fact: As of 26 October 2017, credulous readers were in fact busy spreading the false information across Facebook. Posting a link to a variation of the fake story, one woman wrote:
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