Best-selling horror novelist Stephen King was forced to apologize to his 6.7 million followers on Twitter over a false story he had posted on Wednesday about Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The following day, a left-leaning fact-check site judged King’s post to be false.
In a now-deleted tweet, King wrote that DeSantis had signed a bill “requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with [the] state,” according to PolitiFact. The fact-check found that King’s claim “copied the headline of a June 2021 article published by Salon.” They noted that the headline has now been changed.
This misinformation related to Florida House Bill 233 which “requires the states’ public colleges and universities to ‘conduct an annual assessment of the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity,’ using a survey developed by the State Board of Education or the Board of Governors.”
Following a lengthy explanation, PolitiFact wrote: “We rate King’s statement False.”
The Daily Wire reported that the caption on King’s original tweet, which included a link to the Salon article, read: “I. Can’t. Even.”
Frankly, I. Can’t. Even. believe King was taken in by such a spurious story. I suppose he trusted Salon to give him a fair and accurate account of what happened. Still, I would expect King, who is 74 and a highly acclaimed writer, to be more discerning than this.
At any rate, he apologized to his followers in the tweet below.
I deleted a tweet about Ron DeSantis requiring notice of political views of students and teachers. That really was fake news. Sorry.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 9, 2022
Do you think King would have apologized if he hadn’t been fact-checked?
PolitiFact later posted an update to reflect a statement King had given to CNN. It read: “I regret having posted the headline without being more confident the story was correct. Salon is usually more reliable. Twitter is a constant learning experience, and I will try to do better.”
Actually, Salon is not usually more reliable and the reality is that the far-left novelist wanted the story to be true.
To show you just how out of touch King is, he posted the following tweet on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Putin has made a serious miscalculation.
He forgot he’s no longer dealing with Trump.— Stephen King (@StephenKing) February 23, 2022
His wildly inaccurate portrayal of President Joe Biden as being more formidable than former President Donald Trump is laughable. Yet the post received over 151,000 likes.
King is able to influence public opinion because of his celebrity. His followers look up to him and believe what he says.
Likewise, the leftist media is able to influence public opinion because of their authority.
Unfortunately, the media has abandoned their responsibility to report the news truthfully and we are living with the consequences. Political divisions among Americans have rarely been greater and emotions have reached a fever pitch. This is a terrible time to be whipping up the left with irresponsible stories and tweets.
The chasm between today’s legacy media and their role as envisioned by our founders has never been greater. Those tasked with holding the government accountable and keeping voters informed are now working in cahoots with the government to deceive the people.
Will Stephen King “try to do better” as he promised his followers? No, he’ll seize upon the next piece of red meat held before him by the charlatans pretending to be journalists.
