AFP fact-checker quick to press ‘crazy white guy’ button in Boulder shooting
March 24, 2021
The danger of “fact-checking” is that often the facts are massaged by biased journalists who have a political or other agenda.
Case in point is a fact-checker for the wire service Agence France Presse, Uzair Hasan Rizvi, who was quick to distort the “facts” regarding a mass shooting.
In wake of the shooting in Boulder, Colorado which killed 10 people at a supermarket, Uzair posted in haste on Twitter, wrongly identifying the alleged suspect as a “white guy” having a bad day or with a sex addiction:
“A poor white guy,” he wrote, “who may have had a bad day or just a sex addict – killed at least 10 people in #Boulder. He was only apprehended and not choked or shot to death because he was not brown, black or a Muslim. And yes, he is only a shooter and not a terrorist. #bouldershooting #colorado”
Why’d you delete this @RizviUzair? pic.twitter.com/Hx50bgrit9
— Narwitz (@SophNar0747) March 23, 2021
When called out on his misinformation, Uzair first changed his Twitter account to private before subsequently deleting the account altogether.
His LinkedIn profile still works, however.
Similar to Twitter, Uzair bills himself on LinkedIn as a fact-checking journalist in Delhi, India for AFP. Inquiries to AFP via email and its Whatsapp account verifying that Uzair worked for the French-based wire service so far have gone unanswered. His LinkedIn profile indicates that previously he worked at The Hindustan Times, Thompson Reuters and Google prior to joining AFP in March 2018.
