Michael Mallinson received a harried call from his daughter shortly after Charlie Kirk, the right-wing influencer, was shot in Utah on Wednesday.
She said that his photo was circulating online and that he had been identified — falsely — as the shooter.
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Mallinson said he was a 77-year-old retired banker who lived and was in Toronto. But thousands of posts on social media claimed he was a registered Democrat from Utah who had shot and killed Mr. Kirk. The mix-up was apparently because of his resemblance to a man who was briefly detained by the police after the shooting.
“I’m just shocked by it,” he said in the interview on Wednesday. “How quickly it can happen, how one’s name and photo can get spread around quite quickly.”
In the frantic aftermath of major breaking news, people tend to search desperately for new information. That process can sometimes lead to false conclusions. Social media can add another chaotic element, with unconfirmed claims spreading widely and rapidly before they are fully checked out.
In Mr. Mallinson’s case, the rumor appeared to have originated from an account on X called Fox 11 Reno, though it has no relation to a Fox broadcast affiliate based in Nevada. Instead, it is a fake account, apparently meant to drum up traffic — and ad revenue — for its own phony website. Until late last year, the account used a different username and posted only in Spanish. (The account later deleted its posts about the shooting.)
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The post Canadian Man Falsely Named as Charlie Kirk’s Shooter on Social Media appeared first on New York Times.
