RedState Issues Insane Correction to Article Implying David Hogg Wasn’t At School During Shooting

By Justin BaragonaMar 26th, 2018, 11:13 pm
 

Oh man.

On Monday evening, conservative site RedState ran an article that initially implied Marjory Stoneman Douglas student David Hogg — who in recent weeks has become an outspoken advocate for gun control — wasn’t actually at school the day of the tragic Parkland shooting. Within hours, the site ended up issuing two major updates to the story and striking through the original text of the article.

As originally published with the headline ‘New Video Casts Doubt on Whether David Hogg Was at School on the Day of the Shooting,’ writer Sarah Rumpf compared an interview Hogg gave to TIME Magazine to a recent CBS documentary that included an interview with Hogg. Hogg told TIME about his experience in school the day of the shooting, which included him hiding in a school closet while the massacre occurred.

Rumpf then highlighted that in the recent CBS documentary, Hogg said that on the day of the shooting, he got on his bike and rode as fast as he could to get from his house to the school, which he said was three miles. He did that so he could interview as many people as possible with his camera.

According to Rumpf’s originally written piece, it appeared that Hogg was lying in one of the interviews, as in her words, it was “not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three mile bike ride away from campus.” Rumpf pointed to the fact that the school was locked down shortly after the shooting, so if Hogg was at home, he couldn’t have made it to the school in time via bike.

The first update showed a cellphone video of Hogg hiding in the closet during the shooting, obviously proving he was at school that day. In that update, Rumpf said his comments to CBS still don’t make sense, asking if he violated the lockdown by leaving and then reenetering the campus to interview students.

It was with the second update that the original article completely fell apart and a total correction was issued. Rumpf wrote the following for the second update:

UPDATE #2: This Vox article indicates that Hogg went back to the campus area at 6 pm and did not actually enter campus, but had his camera and interviewed people across the street from campus. Here’s his quote:

At 6 pm after the shooting, I took my camera, got on my bike. I rode in basically twilight. And I ride my bike three miles down winding sidewalks and find my way to the school, as I’ve done in previous years. All the while, I was making sure my camera bag didn’t rip open, because if you zip it a certain way, the camera falls out, and it would be destroyed.

After reviewing all of this, it appears that the problem was that CBS included a very confusing quote without context. Hogg was on campus during the shooting and returned several hours later to interview people across the street. The original story remains below, in strikethrough. I am sorry for the error and have updated the post accordingly.

The post was also given the following new title: ‘UPDATE: CBS Video Confusing. Hogg Was On Campus.’

Rumpf also took to Twitter to apologize for the errors in her piece:

Meanwhile, prior to deleting the tweet, former RedState editor-in-chief Erick Erickson claimed that Hogg had contradicted himself in two separate interviews regarding his whereabouts, adding that it wasn’t a “fake news Gateway Pundit bs story.”

OK then.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona

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