Online trolls bombard Washington Post editor after falsely accusing her of spying on Trump nominee

A Washington Post editor was bombarded with attacks, many of them racist, after conservatives online falsely accused her of photographing the notes of Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee.

On Tuesday evening, video from Tillerson’s Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing began to circulate on Twitter and conservative corners of the Internet. During a break, an Asian woman could be seen standing behind Tillerson’s seat and potentially taking photos of his notes. After some online detective work, a number of people decided that the culprit was Washington Post homepage editor Doris Truong.

They were incorrect.

Truong — who said she seldom reports from the field and wasn’t covering Tillerson’s confirmation hearing — was off work Wednesday and didn’t realize she had become targeted until late that night. She woke up to a deluge of attacks Thursday morning and wrote about her experience for the Post:

No one ever bothered to contact me, but it was this post that Twitter seized upon overnight. By the time I woke up, trolls had commented on social media channels besides Twitter. My Facebook feed had dozens of angry messages from people I didn’t know, as did comments on my Instagram account. Even my rarely used YouTube channel attracted attention. My emails and my voicemail included messages calling me “pathetic” and a “sneaky thief.”

A lot of the comments also focused on my Chinese heritage, implying — or outright stating — that I must be spying for China. Some called for an FBI investigation of what they deemed illegal behavior.

There is nothing in the video to indicate with certainty that the woman in question was a journalist. The spread of the misinformation escalated when the Drudge Report linked to a post on the popular right-wing website Gateway Pundit originally titled “SICK: WaPoReporter Caught Sneaking Photos of Rex Tillerson’s Notes at Senate Hearing.” The post, which inaccurately identified Truong, was promoted by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who tweeted the link, along with the word “Busted”:

Truong wrote that one bright spot of the episode was that a few people reached out to apologize and said they had attempted to correct those who were running with the story. She also said she hoped “the ridiculousness of what happened to me in less than 12 hours makes others think critically before sharing something that can be easily disproved.”

Another popular accused the woman of being an aide to CNN’s Jake Tapper, as The Donald subreddit, a community of supporters of the president-elect, searched for other potential photographers. Inside Climate reporter Lisa Song was also targeted by some who thought she was the woman in the video. She repeatedly posted Thursday that she was not even in Washington when the video was recorded.

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