Photo by Alum Gabriella Angotti-Jones Used in Racist Online Hoax

Thursday, January 11, 2018

POYNTER -- The article debunked a video posted to the USA Politics Daily News Facebook page claiming that beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program burned an American flag. The video had more than 42,000 shares and 800,000 views as of publication.

And at the center of it all was one of Angotti-Jones’ photos.

“I saw it was a photo I’d taken two years ago at the California GOP in Burlingame, and it was a photo of a (Donald) Trump piñata burning,” said Angotti-Jones, a recent San Francisco State University graduate.

Originally published in a San Francisco newspaper in April 2016, the image was picked up by fake-news website Truthfeed in September 2017 and repurposed into a video and accompanying article, Snopes reported. A related tweet had racked up nearly 500 likes and retweets as of publication.

Feed