The cacophony of noise begins with the right wing NRA spokespeople like former US Congressional Representative Jack Kingston hitting the TV cable news shows describing the victims of the recent Florida high school mass shooting as being hijacked by the far left operators as these young peoples challenge the current political conventions that nothing can to done to legislate for reasonable gun control measures.

Then the right wing media outlets pick up the mantle to disparage these young peoples , like the Gateway Pundit and the True Pundit. Then on FOX TV, the pundits will echo these critical voices to create a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact towards these brave inexperience high school students. The story that is now permeating all this noise about these young peoples, is that those we see on TV are really actors who are taking the place of the actual victims. The other tale is that one young man, as the son of a retired FBI agent, is being managed by the FBI.

Here is what (far right media) True Pundit wrote, “Outspoken Trump-Hating School Shooting Survivor is Son of FBI Agent; MSM Helps Prop Up Incompetent Bureau.”

“The kid who has been running his mouth about how Donald Trump and the GOP are teaming to help murder high school kids by upholding the Second Amendment is the son of an FBI agent,” an unnamed author wrote. “David Hogg is a school shooting survivor in Florida. At least that is what the mainstream media has told us. We wouldn’t be surprised by anything involving the FBI at this point.”

Then one of the republican President Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. climbs on the band wagon to encourage the attacks on these traumatized young survivors only to be amplified by Russian pro-gun bots flooding the social media sites.

The thrilling news is that all the establishment media from TV to newspapers to the blogo-sphere news web sites are calling out the lies which are being disseminated  by these NRA supporting, conservative voices. They are defending these young advocates with facts and by granting them even more air time and news coverage.

Russian bots and disinformation campaign (Source: 2/15/18 Wired report) 

Hamilton 68 focuses specifically on tracking Russian bots linked to the Russian government. According to the group’s data, the number 1 link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by the pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts have been using this old link to try to debunk today’s stats about the frequency of school shootings.

Then another widely shared link by the network covers the “deranged” Instagram account of the mass shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase “Allahu Akbar.” The point is to characterize shooters as deranged lone wolves with potential terrorist connections to where no gun control measures could have possibly prevented. This is a popular strategy of pro-gun groups because of the implication that new gun laws could never have prevented these lone wolf actions. On Thursday (2/15/18)  President Trump tweeted as much: “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior.”

Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings have already been spreading misinformation about the shooter’s ties to the right’s bogeyman, Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group. Incidentally, this claim has not been verified. A White Supremacist group spokesperson claimed the mass shooter as one of their own but this assertion has not been verified by the shooter’s own social media footprints. As per RoBhat Labs, the Twitter account Education4Libs is among the top accounts tweeted at by bots that is pushing this idea.

See: Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting | WIRED/ 2/15/18

Here’s the rest of the story…

On February 19, 2018, Judd Legum of Think Progress penned the following report, “The far-right smear campaign against students who survived the Parkland massacre” (“They are being targeted because they don’t want more of their classmates to die.”)

“Students who survived the gun massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have emerged as powerful advocates of gun control and fierce critics of the NRA. Now they are being targeted by a right-wing smear campaign.”

David Hogg, a senior at the school, was one of the first to appear on national television and demand action. “We’re children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role. Work together.”

“Hogg is now being targeted by Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that has press credentials from the Trump White House. A post published on Monday (2/19/18) by the site’s White House correspondent, Lucian Wintrich, features Hogg’s photo with the word “EXPOSED” stamped in red.”

“Wintrich says Hogg and other students throw up some “red flags.” The first “red flag” is that Hogg’s father is a retired FBI agent. (Hogg freely admitted this on national television.) The insinuation is that Hogg’s father, who does not even work for the FBI, has tasked his son with talking about gun control to take the heat off the agency.”

“Wintrich also uses an edited YouTube video of Hogg having some difficulty answering questions for a taped interview as evidence that Hogg is “heavily coached on lines and is merely reciting a script.” There is no evidence, in the video or elsewhere in the article, supporting this claim.”

“Wintrich then drops all pretenses and fully embraces the conspiracy:”

“Why would the child of an FBI agent be used as a pawn for anti-Trump rhetoric and anti-gun legislation? Because the FBI is only looking to curb YOUR Constitutional rights and INCREASE their power. We’ve seen similar moves by them many times over. This is just another disgusting example of it.”

“The Gateway Pundit story is spreading quickly on Facebook and has already been picked up by One American News Network, another right-wing outlet with White House media credentials.”

“The article is also being promoted by Bradley Blakeman, a member of the George W. Bush administration, lobbyist and frequent television pundit.”

“The article is entitled “Student School Massacre Survivors and CBS Reporter Party Like Rock Stars.” But there is no evidence of any partying. Rather, at one point, the group, which was being interviewed for CBS’ morning show, smiled for a photo.”

“The article parrots a popular post on r/The_Donald, a Reddit forum for Trump supporters.”

“The attacks on Hogg and other students are also extremely widespread on Gab, a social network that caters to white nationalists and other extremists groups.”

“The question now is whether these attacks, as they often do, spread beyond Gateway Pundit and OANN to more mainstream conservative outlets.”

UPDATE: Hogg responds to the smear campaign in comments to BuzzFeed News:

“I just think it’s a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government when these people feel the need to pedal conspiracy theories about people that were in a school shooting where 17 people died and it just makes me sick. It’s immature, rude, and inhuman for these people to destroy the people trying to prevent the death of the future of America because they won’t.”