Those media fact checkers are up to their old shenanigans again. In the wake of the release of footage showing Greta Thunberg waiting with police officers, holding hands with them, laughing, taking photos, and waiting for their cue to engage the media in an apparent staging of her “arrest” last week, fact checkers are now coming to her defense, boldly claiming the incident wasn’t staged at all.
Last week, 20-year-old climate change alarmist Greta Thunberg made headlines for getting arrested by police in Germany after participating in a protest against the expansion of a coal mine. The coverage was enhanced with pictures and video of Thunberg being carried away by police, as if she was forcibly removed from the site against her will.
Related: Rebel News Furnishes Further Proof That Greta Thunberg Is a Child Actor on the World Stage
Not long after the story broke, a new video leaked that showed Greta and German police prior to the “shocking” footage of her being hauled off. In it, everyone appears to be having a good time, waiting to hit their marks and for someone to yell “Action!”
Since people tend to believe what their eyes tell them, the above video seemed to expose Thunberg as a fraud, and she was questioned about the publicity stunt by Rebel News. Naturally, the mainstream media had to provide cover for her with a bogus fact check.
USA Today fact checkers came to Thunberg’s defense, saying the arrest wasn’t staged because — get this — Thunberg wasn’t actually arrested, she was merely “detained.”
“Thunberg was not arrested during the incident in question, but she was detained by German police on Jan. 17 at the open-pit coal mine of Garzweiler 2 while protesting against the demolition of a village,” the outlet reported.
Even CheckYourFact, which is operated by The Daily Caller, bought into this wrangling over semantics.
USA Today did add that the police department involved with the protest denied the incident was staged. “We would never give ourselves to make such recordings,” Dana Zimmermann, a spokesperson for the Aachen police department, said. “We are not the extras for the staging of Greta Thunberg.”
We can quibble over the use of the word “arrest” over “detain” until we’re blue in the face, but that’s not really what matters here — at least to everyone but the fact checkers.
Thunberg may not have been arrested or charged, but it’s hard to deny that the original presentation of her “detainment” by the police — her being carried away as if she was being taken against her will — was staged for the media’s benefit. You can’t watch the above video of Thunberg’s cheery interactions with the police before engaging with the media photographers and reach any other conclusion.
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