Media Falls Hook, Line and Sinker for Yet Another Fake Hate Story
21st December 2016
A YouTube prankster’s viral video accusing Delta Airlines of anti-Muslim discrimination made national headlines early Wednesday. But the man behind the video has a proven record of faking stories for attention and the media didn’t think twice before reporting his unsubstantiated story.
Adam Saleh, the young man in question, claimed Delta Airlines ejected him and his friend from the flight because other passengers complained that he made them “uncomfortable” after they heard him speaking in Arabic to his mother on the phone. Saleh then began recording as Delta crew tried to escort him from the plane. In the video, Saleh loudly calls out passengers and the flight crew for being racists.
…
The kicker is that Saleh has done this many, many times before. His YouTube page is filled with dozens of videos where he stages pranks, intending to get a bigoted reaction from his unsuspecting audience. In several of these videos, he goes so far as to hire actors to play bigots.
In 2014, another one of his videos that supposedly exposed Islamophobia went viral but weeks later, he was forced to admit that the whole incident was staged. At the time, Saleh put up a disclaimer saying it was staged but apparently took it down at some point later because the video now has no disclaimer or indicator anywhere saying it is an act.