If you want a “smart, speedy take on the news around the world,” perhaps don’t rely on “News Portal,” the name of a WordPress blog that describes itself as such.
One of its blog posts, undated but shared on Facebook on March 7, has a headline that says: “‘The View’ settles with the Rittenhouses for $22 million and a formal apology.”
Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of intentional homicide among other charges after he shot and killed two people during a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. He has floated the possibility of filing defamation lawsuits against some news organizations. But this blog post is wrong.
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
We found no credible evidence, such as news stories or court filings, that Rittenhouse has filed — or settled — a lawsuit against ABC’s daytime talk show “The View.”
This article was poached wholesale from another website: USA Taters, which is part of the “‘America’s Last Line of Defense’ network of parody, satire and tomfoolery,” in its own words.
“Everything on this website is fiction,” says USA Taters’ “About Us” page. “If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.”
The News Portal post circulating on social media includes no such caveat.
It’s similar to other blog posts that share stories that originated on satire sites as if they were real news. Among them: A November 2021 claim that Rittenhouse filed a $60 million lawsuit against “The View” hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg. That was inaccurate, and so is this.
We rate this post False.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. It is republished here with permission. See the sources for this fact check here and more of their fact checks here.
