The 'crisis actors' lie spreads in wake of Florida shooting

It happens in the wake of almost any tragedy serious enough to make the national news: Conspiracy theories circulate claiming that it didn’t really happen, or that it was staged to advance a political agenda, or that the witnesses and family members seen sobbing on television are actually actors. In the wake of the mass killing at a Florida high school last week, it happened again — this time, spread by an aide to a state legislator who emailed a Tampa Bay Times reporter to pass along a tip that “[b]oth kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.”

The “kids” referred to by Benjamin A. Kelly, a district secretary for Republican state Rep. Shawn Harrison, were two survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting who were interviewed on CNN. Kelly was promulgating a notion as cruel as it is implausible: The people on television you see grieving? Actors paid to show up and look sad.

Source: Yahoo News