Fox didn’t cover Popeyes over Louisville shooting

CLAIM: Fox News covered a new chicken sandwich from Popeyes on Monday morning instead of a deadly mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. An image claiming to show the broadcast was fabricated. Online archives show Fox News had extensive coverage throughout the morning of the Louisville shooting, in which five people were killed. Regardless, Popeyes did not announce a new chicken sandwich on Monday.

THE FACTS: In the hours after the shooting at Louisville’s Old National Bank, social media users began sharing the falsified image as proof that Fox News covered a story about the fried chicken chain instead of the tragedy.

The image shows what appears to be a Fox News broadcast, including a photo of a Popeyes fried chicken sandwich and captions stating, “Chicken Sandwich Wars” and “Popeyes Announces New Sandwich.” One tweet in which it was featured had received more than 6,000 likes and more than 2,000 shares as of Monday.

But the image does not show an actual Fox News broadcast. It uses an old photo of a Popeyes chicken sandwich, along with text along the bottom of the screen that appears to be referring to a 2019 story on canceled trade and climate summits in Chile.

Fox News reporting from Monday morning on the Louisville shooting appears in online archives. Louisville police said on Twitter that officers were on the scene of the shooting within minutes and that calls first came in for the shooting at about 8:30 a.m. The story was covered by Fox News starting midmorning on the East Coast.

Sofie Watson, a spokesperson for Fox News, confirmed to The Associated Press that these claims about the network’s coverage are not true.

Additionally, Popeyes has not recently announced a new chicken sandwich on any of its social media platforms. The chain released its crispy chicken sandwich, which is pictured in the fabricated image, in 2019.

Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel identified the shooter as Connor Sturgeon, a 25-year-old employee of Old National Bank who livestreamed the attack on Instagram, and said that he was killed by police in an exchange of gunfire. Sturgeon’s victims included a close friend of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Nine people were injured, one of whom later died. Two police officers were among those injured, including one in critical condition.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.