Over the weekend, the San Antonio Express-News posted a bland weekly roundup on local restaurant inspections. One of them included an area Chinese restaurant, Lee's Garden Chinese Restaurant, where an inspector saw a dog on the premises. Like, somebody's pet. Perhaps not particularly sanitary, depending on where the dog was hanging out, but whatever. It got the necessary citation.
However, when the restaurant inspection report was posted to the San Antonio Express-News' Facebook page on Saturday, they used the headline "Inspectors Find Dogs in Chinese Restaurant" accompanied by a photo of food. The insinuation, of course, is that the Chinese restaurant was caught serving dog meat.
When you click through to the article, the actual headline on mysanantonio.com simply reads "San Antonio restaurant inspections: February 17, 2017." The report notes that "roaches and dogs were seen in the establishment." And that's it. (Okay, the roaches are gross.) That was apparently all they needed to put together a racist, misleading Facebook post. Guaranteed to get some clicks.
Of course, nobody actually reads anything. The misleading headline inspired a deluge of Facebook comments along the lines of "Ooh hell no I just had Chinese last night... Mfs trynna kill us" and "Fuck Chinese lol."
Let's not kid around. Whoever posted this knew exactly what they were doing, putting together a sensational headline that preys on perception of Chinese-ness as dirty and subhuman. The headline was eventually changed later in the day, after the Express-News received complaints. But that shit worked. The post racked up thousands of shares and became the site's most popular story of the day.
You want to talk about "fake news"?
(Thanks, Lorne.)
