conspiracy theory

Was NPR in on the January 6th "False Flag" Operation?

Son

Son

— 2 min read
Was NPR in on the January 6th "False Flag" Operation?

Thanks to my mother for sharing this! Let's take a look at the claim first.

"NPR accidentally released an article at about 9:30am about Trump supporters clash with police and Congress electoral count of votes being halted, HOURS before anything like this ever occurred."
January 6th was a false flag operation, according to the same people who think all involved are innocent.

Do we have enough levels of screenshotting going on here? The claim is that NPR "mistakenly" published an article describing the protesters' confrontation with police hours before it escalated to that point.

Talk about sloppy! The deep state, which is somehow thorough enough to operate without leaving behind a shred of substantial evidence, forgot to schedule a post for the right time of day. Actually, it didn't even need to be scheduled. The article could have sat in a draft state and published when appropriate. Journalists are definitely familiar with the practice.

If it wasn't carelessness (which is what the post suggests), then what actually happened? The story was edited with more up-to-date information as the day's events unfolded. This included updating the title. Take a look just beyond what the screenshot included:

A red circle highlights the time the NPR article was edited
The article was updated in the afternoon, as indicated by an obnoxious red circle and arrow.

It's right there in plain sight. But hang on, I hear you say. How do we know it actually was edited and this isn't a cover-up attempt from NPR? Because we can see the original article! And not from NPR, but from a completely independent source, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. If you take the URL for the article and find a snapshot taken the day it was published, you can see the original title: "Diehard Trump Supporters Gather In The Nation's Capital To Protest Election Results" Take a look.

The original title for NPR's January 6th article, preserved by the Wayback Machine
Sorry, no evidence of Jan 6th being an inside job here.

You can actually see this title in the slug of the article:

https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tally-live-updates/2021/01/06/953616207/diehard-trump-supporters-gather-in-the-nations-capital-to-protest-election-resul

How do I know the Internet Archive isn't also in on the conspiracy? First, I'd have to see some evidence of Wayback Machine content being tampered with ever in order to entertain such a ridiculous possibility. But fine, let's try one more archive. Here's a snapshot from archive.today:

Original NPR article title, preserved by archive.today
Are you getting it yet?

Doesn't this perfectly sum it up? The original poster and everyone who shared this saw evidence where there was none. All because it supports the narrative they already chose to believe. Advice to the conspiracy theorists out there. If you're going to "do your own research," at least do it well.

Read more