Maybe this is a glimpse of the new Fox News. Maybe they’re just getting really tired of big lawsuits and yuuge judgments. Could be. The Hudson Valley Times-Union is reporting that a story about homeless veterans staying in upstate New York hotels and then being displaced by migrants is made up.
Over the past week, a sensational story has torn through local and national media: A local nonprofit said homeless veterans under its care had been kicked out of upstate hotels to make room for migrants bused from New York City. But the story has fallen apart over the past 48 hours, culminating Thursday evening with state Assemblyman Brian Maher, R-Walden, who had been advocating for the veterans in national media and in the state Legislature, denouncing it as false in a call with the Times Union.
Maher said he was “devastated and disheartened” after a conversation with the CEO of the nonprofit earlier in the day revealed that the story wasn’t true. He is calling for the organization to be investigated by the state attorney general’s office and the Orange County district attorney. […]
The story of the displaced veterans, which was first published by the New York Post on Friday night, cites two sources. The first is Toney-Finch, CEO of the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation, or YIT, an Orange County nonprofit formed to raise awareness of premature births and to help homeless and low-income military service veterans who need living assistance, according to its website. […]
The second source for the Post story is Maher, a Navy reservist who represents the 101st District. Maher had previously volunteered with and donated to YIT. In the past week, he introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would bar hotels from displacing veterans to accept migrants sent by New York City, and he appeared on Fox News to discuss the situation and call for donations. On Tuesday, he proudly introduced Toney-Finch at a legislative session in Albany, where she was also honored as a “2023 woman of distinction” by state Sen. Rob Rolison, R-Poughkeepsie.
They’re calling for donations to address an egregious situation which doesn’t exist. This raised enough of a stink to where Laura Ingraham did a backhanded retraction of sorts.
We ran stories nonstop for a week on a total lie until we got caught because we are Fox and that’s what we do. Of course, it was the “fake news” that caught them. https://t.co/rhfUVn83Eq
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 20, 2023
“We have no clue why anyone would do such a thing.” Here’s a hint: it’s sort of like people who make up lies that Donald Trump didn’t really lose the 2020 election, in order to get eyeballs and ratings.
Never hurts to fact check. Especially if you’re a major network. But then again, caring about credibility is a new thing with these folks, it might take a while.
The story was on fux so of course it was false. Who doubted this…oh, wait, forgot we are a nation of hillbillies.
Don’t pick on hills.
Don’t pick on billies either:
ˈbi-lē plural billies. chiefly Scottish : comrade, companion. my old school billie
LMAO
I believe, they have told more lies than Trump, who has told tens of thousands. Anyone who is still watching them, MUST want to be lied to. It’s not just a hillbilly problem. As a species, we’ve ALWAYS had a problem with the TRUTH. We are marooned on a fragile planet, we’re destroying out from under us, leaving us with no options. NONE. We’ve figured out how to land a car on Mars, but we can’t look past the color of our skin, our various cultures or religious beliefs, to LIVE TOGETHER IN PEACE. Irony? We live in denial of the FACT we’re all headed to the grave, which could happen to any of us, at any time, for any reason, yet, we’re doing everything we can to hasten it. No sir, you can’t just blame a small group. Our time as a species won’t last another generation if we keep on this path. We need a revolution of some kind. A revolution of consciousness, not one at the point of a gun.
I read about this earlier – that the whole allegation was false. And State. Rep. Maher? The jury is out on him as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s good that he is being blunt about saying unequivocally the whole thing was a hoax, and publicly calling on the State’s AG to open an investigation into the non-profit. Yet he was active with that non-profit and great pals with the head of it as your article indicates. That makes me wonder how the hell he couldn’t have known right away something was off. Your article doesn’t note it but I’ve read elsewhere people were paid to tell journalists lies about being homeless veterans “displaced” from their temporary housing. Maher didn’t talk with some of these people himself to hear their stories, and have his staff verify some of the details before initially going around hyping the FALSE story?
Maybe, just maybe he learned that journalists had done what I just suggested, some good old fashioned checking. The kind of stuff that used to be standard for journalists but sadly has become rare enough to seem quaint to us old farts. The point is that while Maher might be sincere, and really upset about getting duped/being too trusting of the non-profit’s head it’s equally (to me at least0 possible he realized the whole thing was about to blow up and wanted to get ahead of the scandal curve!
It could be there’s more to come with this ugly story. Especially if indeed people took money (who paid them?) to tell tragic but false tales.
This really both disgusts me and makes me angry. I’m a veteran. I also wound up homeless some years back. (I’ve told the story here so I won’t bore you with it again) However I was lucky because I’d been connected with an awesome social worker at the VA Medical Center where I get my healthcare. She connected me with a VOA program in Durham that provided temporary apartments and other services to help people like me get stablized and find new permanent housing. My social worker helped me enroll in a HUD program that wound up we me moving into the apartment where I’ve been for years now. Again, I was lucky. And grateful there were people and agencies like VOA to “catch” me and help out. As tall as I am sleeping in my car (Camry) was tough.
So, when the chance came to give back and help other homeless people I jumped at it. Volunteer work is something I’ve done since I was a kid, but this? This had a special urgency for me. I KNOW how big the problem is for veterans and non-veterans alike. There are more homeless people than there are beds and other resources to house (whether temporary, or even emergency. As with any charitable giving that for the homeless fell off due to Covid and hasn’t recovered. People have become more willing to give, but not as much AND they are more cautious about giving to smaller local or even regional organizations. Even nationally known ones have fundraising issues.
THIS kind of crap will make people more skeptical, if not downright unwilling to give to any local or county non-profit that serves veterans or the homeless. All over the country because this exploded into national news!
And Faux Nooz? Oh, they had the resources to within a day find out whether the story was true and didn’t bother. The headline and the “outrage” they knew they could manufacture and market was too good to pass up so why would they risk doing some checking that would risk debunking it? Once a story like this gets parked in the average person’s mind it’s tough, even with a full-own “we blew it – this story was false. Sorry!” retraction it’s tough to get people’s minds straight. And for Fox viewers NO amount of retraction will ever do the trick. Too many RWNJ hacks will keep hyping this on the internet, in newsletters ect. and even with stuff along the lines of “Fox is saying on air it was false but even they know this happened. But the LAWYERS are making them say what they’re now saying!” You don’t think the MAGA goobers will eat that kind of sh*t up with a spoon?
As a vet myself, I’m happy to hear you got back on your feet!
I’m amazed–even shocked–that Fox “News” would actually acknowledge they’d aired a false story (read “lie”).
Fox News?? Oh yeah, the propaganda organization masquerading as a news organization? Watching or listening to anything they have to say is an utter waste of valuable time.