Quebec Mosque Attack

Twenty-four hours later, Fox News still has not corrected its erroneous tweet that a suspect in the mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City is “of Moroccan origin.” The suspect is actually a French Canadian man named Alexandre Bissonnette who is described in one news report “as an online troll who was inspired by extreme right-wing French nationalists, stood up for U.S. President Donald Trump and was against immigration to Quebec — especially by Muslims.”

During the evening of January 29, a gunman entered the Quebec Islamic Cultural Center and opened fire, killing six people and wounding eight others. Police initially arrested two suspects in the attack: Bissonnette and Mohamed Belkhadir, who is of Moroccan descent.

What happened next exemplifies Fox News’ tendency to try to pin the blame for high-profile acts of violence on entire communities — but only when doing so suits the outlet’s conservative world view. Here’s a brief timeline:

At 12:05 and 12:06 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 30, Quebec police released two tweets indicating that […]