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Did Police Tell Newspapers That $2.4M of Merchandise Was Looted from a SoHo Rolex Store — When Rolex Said it Wasn’t? Claim The New York Post ran a headline claiming that $2.4 million worth of Rolex items had been looted during protests near a SoHo store, reporting in the same article that Rolex denied the claim. Rating True Like this fact check? Reporting Amid widespread protests and social unrest throughout the United States, a June 3 2020 Facebook post highlighted a discrepancy in the New York Post ‘s coverage — specifically, a headline about a purported looting of $2.4 million in watches at a SoHo Rolex store, and conflicting information from the brand itself. The post read: Remember: Police lie all the time. And all the time, police lie. A screenshot of a tweet was shared with that text: The tweet read: Police told the news that looters broke into the Soho Rolex store and stole $2.4 million dollars worth of watches. Florida is where wokes go to die... Please enable JavaScript Florida is where wokes go to die Rolex told the news that’s impossible because there were NO watches in store. Via two internet archives , we accessed a June 1 2020 New York Post article headlined, Looters swipe $2.4M worth of watches from Soho Rolex store, which began citing police sources for the claim $2.4 million worth of watches were stolen from a SoHo, Manhattan Rolex store: Looters broke into a Soho Rolex store during rioting and stole $2.4 million worth of watches, police sources said [June 1 2020]. [...] The Rolex store is empty, a police source said. They stole like $2.4 million in Rolexes. On one archived version, brief paragraphs of reporting were interspersed with advertisements, links to other pages by the paper, and video content. Way down at the bottom under all of that, was a very short final sentence: Beneath a stock photograph of a New York City Rolex store’s front windows, that paragraph read: The store’s spokesman said no watches of any kind were stolen, as there weren’t any on display in the store. There were simply windows broken and some vitrines smashed. (In the context of the reporting, vitrines which were smashed were glass display cases.) Another thing we noticed on one of the two separate archives of the article was that an update to the New York Post ‘s reporting had also been archived . We archived it again when we visited it, but the URL remained the same as it was on the day it was published: nypost.com/2020/06/01/ looters-swipe-2-4m-worth-of-watches-from-soho-rolex-store/ Although heavy edits were appended to both the headline and content, we saw no note nor clarification of edits. Next to the date, small gray text read Updated, but there was no indication aside from the URL that the page had been so broadly revised: Despite the URL’s reflection of the original reporting, the headline was changed to: Conflicting reports of looting at Soho Rolex store. The article itself was revised as follows: Looters broke into a Soho Rolex store during rioting and stole $2.4 million worth of watches, police sources said [on June 1 2020], but the store’s management contradicted the report. Video shows throngs of people making their way through the front door of the Greene Street store before fleeing a short time later. The Rolex store is empty, a police source said. They stole like $2.4 million in Rolexes. But the store’s spokesman said no watches of any kind were stolen, as there weren’t any on display in the store. There were simply windows broken and some vitrines smashed. Two people were arrested in the fracas and charged with burglary, police said. Text in boldface above deviated from the original copy, and the comment from the Rolex spokesperson was moved up above the last paragraph. We visited Rolex’s Twitter account and website, but found no reference to the store’s statement. It is true that a New York Post article headlined Looters swipe $2.4M worth of watches from Soho Rolex store spread virally on social media, and it was extremely likely that more people saw the headline than the content of the report. It is also true that the report quoted a Rolex store spokesperson as indicating no watches of any kind were stolen, as there weren’t any on display in the store, and that the damage was simply windows broken and some vitrines smashed in the course of the protests. The Post quietly revised their headline and content without any sort of editor’s note, but as of June 4 2020, the URL matched its original misleading headline. Posted in Disinformation , Fact Checks Tagged bad reporting , basically an outright lie , looting , looting rumors , new york post , nypd , police sources , rolex , rolex looting soho , viral facebook posts
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