A staff writer at The Dallas Morning News took a photo on May 11, 2011, outside a newly opened In-N-Out Burger on Preston Road in Frisco. But, seven years later the same photo was used inappropriately to promote a fake news.
As reported by the news outlet, the photo, which showed a huge crowd, was captured when Valerie Wigglesworth, the employee of The Dallas Morning News visited the fast-food restaurant to report about its opening day.
She said, "I've written hundreds of stories since then, but I still remember the In-N-Out assignment well. Not only did I learn the restaurant's theme song — see my 2011 video here — but I also witnessed true bliss."
But on Tuesday, September 4 she saw a notification in her Twitter feed with a link to a Reddit forum called "The_Donald" and the description says, "The_Donald is a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump."
When Valerie clicked on the link, she found the picture, which she took in 2011. But, the story was way too different from reality, as the headline of the image stated, "IN-N-OUT BURGER Tonight producing record sales tonight as Democrats are boycotting the business after it donated 25k in funds to the REPUBLICAN PARTY."
Last week, Eric Bauman California Democratic Party chairman initially called for a boycott on Twitter after he came to know about the fast-food chain's GOP donation.
However, Bauman did not take such steps as he told The Sacramento Bee, "There is no boycott." But, as per The Bee millions of people engaged themselves with this issue and later, Valerie found that her picture was picked up by many people, who wanted to make a point and she also saw that one site has given the photo credit to someone else.
In addition, she said, "My favourite, though, comes from a site called truthfeednews.com. It uses my photo above a headline that states: 'Democrats Tried to Boycott In-N-Out Burger, But These Photos Show It Was an Absolute FAILURE.'"
Tweaking the truth of such images and using it as the cover picture of a story that has no relation with the photo or using such images to generate more viewers and followers on social media is called a misrepresentation of visual content, which can also create several fake news. So, people are advised to avoid the particular image or report it instantly if they have found such news on social media.
