Free Republic

In the early reporting of the Capital Gazette mass murder, Conor Berry, a reporter for a Massachusetts newspaper, The Republican, tweeted that the shooter had dropped his MAGA hat on the newsroom floor before opening fire. It was a stupid remark, not to mention one for which Berry had no supporting facts, which he has since acknowledged. What makes such tweets particularly toxic is that they color early perceptions of these events, and tend to become urban legends and the stuff of conspiracy theories. BerryÂ’s tweet was similar to earlier instances such as cable talking heads speculating that other shooters...

A reporter at a Massachusetts-based newspaper resigned Friday after falsely claiming in a tweet Thursday that the man who killed five employees at the Capital Gazzete newspaper left a “Make America Great Again” hat at the crime scene. “Shooter who killed 4 people at Annapolis newspaper dropped his #MAGA hat on newsroom floor before opening fire,” Conor Berry, a reporter at The Republican in Springfield, Mass., wrote in a now-deleted tweet. Berry, who covered politics and crime for The Republican, apologized for the “stupid” and “regrettable” tweet Friday, adding that it made his 21-year career as a journalist come to...