March 22, 2021
Several MSNBC personalities shared a crowded Miami Beach photo to complain about vacationers flouting coronavirus distancing guidelines, but there was one problem: the photo was from 2019.
“Today’s center of the #COVIDIOTS universe is Miami Beach, Florida,” MSNBC analyst Fernand R. Amandi tweeted on Saturday, complete with a photo of a packed beach.
But internet sleuths quickly discovered the photo was taken for a 2019 Sun Sentinel article about Miami Beach law enforcement cracking down on rowdy spring breakers, nearly a year before COVID shut down the United States.
However, that didn’t stop MSNBC host Joy Reid, who is one of two hosts on the left-wing outlet’s primetime lineup with a history of fakes, from sharing the photo with her 2 million followers and wrote, “That literally looks like a microscopic image of a petrie dish,” complete with sick-face emojis.
Amandi acknowledged the mistake Monday morning, but in true fake news form, the correction appeared to get far less attention than the original misinformation.