PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2019-02-13 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Did the City of Denver Legalize Public Urination and Defecation? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • In early 2019, an old story re-emerged online claiming that authorities in the city of Denver, Colorado, had taken the step of legalizing public urination and defecation. On 17 January, the right-leaning web site Joe for America -- started by the conservative commentator Joe Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher -- re-published an article with the headline It is now legal to defecate and urinate on Denver sidewalks, an article which reported that: The article was disseminated widely on Twitter and on Facebook, especially after Joe For America's Facebook account Freedom and the American Way shared it on 13 February. The use of the word now in the headline created the misleading impression that the article described events that had taken place in early 2019. In reality, the article had been published in 2017 and had been updated and re-shared by Joe for America on several occasions since then, each time creating the false impression that Denver City Council had recently voted to make public urination and defecation legal. In reality, Denver City Council did not make it legal to defecate and urinate on Denver sidewalks, in 2017, 2018, or 2019. However, they did vote to implement lesser penalties for such antisocial behavior back in May 2017. Joe for America's article featured significant plagiarism of an accurate 23 May 2017 report published by Denver television station KUSA, which stated: Denver's Democratic mayor, Michael Hancock, introduced the set of reforms as Council Bill 17-0513 on 25 April 2017. The City Council unanimously voted in favor of them on 22 May, and Mayor Hancock signed the reforms on 25 May, thereby creating the new three-tiered structure for certain violations of city ordinances. The text of the bill made it clear that urinating or defecating in public remained an offense under the city of Denver's Code of Ordinances, Title 2, Chapter 38.99: So in casting their votes on 22 May 2017, Denver City Council members were passing a set of ordinances that meant anyone convicted of public urination or defecation would be liable to a jail sentence of up to 60 days, although they would not face any fine. Before the bill was signed, a conviction for public urination or defecation could have yielded a prison sentence of up to one year and a fine of up to $999. Therefore, the claim that Denver City Council made it legal to defecate or urinate on Denver sidewalks, as Joe for America phrased it in their headline, was and is false. Indeed, the body of the article contained much more nuance than the headline, largely because it plagiarized an earlier KUSA-TV report which accurately described the lower penalties -- but not legalization -- that had been implemented for such antisocial offenses. Joe for America's headline is therefore no more than sensationalist and inaccurate sharebait, made even more misleading by its use of the phrase It is now legal, which means that every time Joe for America re-publishes and reshares the story with its inaccurate headline, social media users are misled into believing they are reading recent news. In reality, the headline was as false in 2019 and 2018 as it was when it was first published in 2017. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url