Fact Check: Did Fox News Cover a New Chicken Sandwich Instead of the Louisville Shooting?

No.

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A digitally altered screenshot of a Fox News report has been taken by social media users to suggest that the network aired coverage of a new chicken sandwich released by fast food chain Popeyes instead of covering a Louisville, Kentucky, shooting that left five people dead and eight others injured on April 10. This claim is false. When asked for comment by The Dispatch Fact Check, a Fox News spokesperson confirmed that the image is fake.   

Fox News’ website has published articles about Popeyes chicken sandwiches before, but a  search of the site shows no evidence of any video segments posted about Popeyes since the shooting in Louisville took place. 

Additionally, the text shown in the ticker at the bottom of the altered screenshot appears to reference a story from 2019 about Chile’s inability to host a climate summit because of mass protests. This suggests that the original screenshot is at least four years old. The Popeyes ad campaign from which the image of the chicken sandwich in the altered photo was taken also dates to 2019. 

The Twitter user who shared the screenshot has posted it on at least one other occasion in the past in the context of other news events. This tweet was posted on February 12, 2021, years before the Louisville shooting: 

Footage of Fox News’ coverage of the Louisville shooting and its aftermath can be viewed here and here. 

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.

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  1. Betsybowditch

    This is the first sentence in an article that appears on salon.com illuminating disinformation about the Titanic but it applies equally here:

    It is a strange irony that the internet — the byproduct of millennia of scientific and technological progress — has evolved into a wellspring for the dissemination of pseudoscience and unfounded conspiracy theories.

    https://www.salon.com/2023/04/15/111-years-after-it-sank-tiktok-is-helping-spread-misinformation-about-the-titanic/

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      Ben Connelly

      I don’t think it’s ironic. Humans have always been superstitious and conspiratorial. Every new communications technology has been used by some people for that purpose. It’s probably inevitable.

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      1. Betsybowditch

        True. But the social media has brought it to a new level. I saw this in the immediate social media postings when the stabbing death of Bob Lee, a tech entrepreneur who founded Cash App, firs made the news and was almost instantaneously taken as confirmation of an emerging narrative about San Francisco, where the crime occurred. Lee’s friends and business acquaintances knew where to point the finger: San Francisco’s liberal politicians.

        “Chesa Boudin, & the criminal-loving city council that enabled him & a lawless SF for years, have Bob’s literal blood on their hands,” tweeted venture investor Matt Ocko, naming the progressive district attorney who was turned out of office in a recall vote last year.

        I was in SF last weekend and stayed in the Tenderloin no less. I have watched that neighborhood, which had a drug problem for as long as I remember, descend further. The art galleries that used to host events have closed and Ihere are addicts in every direction. If I come back to the place I stay after dark, I use Lyft even though there is a bus stop quite close.

        But I found the story of Bob Lee's death, which occurred outside his luxury condo, odd and unlikely to have been perpetrated by a mugger who happened upon him at 2AM. It quickly came out that he had been killed by the brother of a woman he'd had some involvement with after the suspect had been arrested. The two men had spent time together that evening.

        Doubt this information reached those who prefer the out of control city narrative. They like their story better.

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          Ben Connelly

          Yeah social media is an amplifier for all kinds of information-related social contagions. I don’t disagree with you.

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          1. Betsybowditch

            I think the doctored pics like this one, or Nancy Pelosi's injured husband and his gay lover, are posted as entertainment for true believers who come to accept it as reflecting reality.

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      Sheila M

      Thanks for the Titanic article. When I was in college, I took a folklore class, and the professor had done significant work on urban legends that were passed via fax in those days. Email was just starting to be used more widely, and urban legends/conspiracy theories were rife there as well. Social media has just accelerated and made it more widespread and sophisticated as we have fewer "trusted" sources for information.

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