Radio host Rush Limbaugh pushed a fake story that Hurricane Florence “contains sharks” that have been “lifted” into the storm, quoting a fake chyron that’s been spreading on social media and elsewhere online. The image is a recycled version of a fake chyron from 2017, which made the same claim about Hurricane Irma.
A fake news chyron claiming Hurricane Florence “now contains sharks” is spreading online. The fake chyron previously popped up last year for Hurricane Irma. pic.twitter.com/pMgYWUSPtB
— Alex Kaplan (@AlKapDC) September 12, 2018
Limbaugh, who also claimed that coverage of Florence has been overhyped to push concerns about climate change (a claim he has made about hurricane coverage in the past), said “reports” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “show sharks have been lifted into the hurricane.” He also said that sharks “are being lifted out of the Atlantic Ocean and dumped into the storm because it’s so strong it’s sucking them in there,” and he held up a printout of the fake chyron for his camera.
From the September 11 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh Show: