Fox News aired a provably false story Tuesday night, and they should retract it.
Turns out parents in the white and wealthy Dallas suburb of Highland Park received flyers from a group claiming the name "Dallas Justice Now." The missive told parents they should not allow their high schoolers to apply to Ivy League schools in order to "leave room" for non-white applicants. It also threatened parents with having their names published as "racists" if they didn't sign a pledge to bar their kids from applying to Ivy League schools.
On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson stand-in [Fox News link] Mark Steyn crowed about white liberals willing to go all-in for Black Lives Matter until it affected their kids' Ivy League standing: "So if you white liberal allies are just thinking you can point your tax-deductible donation to the El Paso Festival of Aspiring Rappers, that ain't going to cut it anymore." Steyn sniffed.
The story bubbled through the right-wing ecosphere: everyone from Candace Owens to PJ Media wanted to "call out" white liberals who were "exposed" as hypocrites by a "Black activist organization."
Attorney Geoff Bowser smelled a rat:
The whole thing turns out to be a right-wing fake. Steven Monacelli at the Dallas Observer did real shoe-leather reporting and connected the "Dallas Justice Now" group to a right-wing PR firm called Arena:
Online research also connects Arena to Keep Dallas Safe, an organization run by a confirmed astroturfer, suggesting there may be deeper connections between these efforts in terms of funders and strategy.
Arena has worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Michigan Republican Party and various other right-wing politicians and political campaigns. They also appear to have worked with Keep Dallas Safe, according to the Luceo Solutions site index as well as source code of the Keep Dallas Safe staging website. (Earlier this year, Keep Dallas Safe targeted candidates in the Dallas City Council election with false claims that they intended to defund the police.)
This is exactly the same kind of ratfking that Jacob Wohl and Project Veritas pull on a regular basis. Think we'll get a retraction from any of the right-wing sites and outlets that pimped this garbage?
Nobody lies to conservative voters more than Fox News.
