Edward Snowden Found Dead in Russia-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Reports from Russia indicate that Edward Snowden’s girlfriend has found him dead.
The Truth:
Edward Snowden has not been found dead by his girlfriend.
Snowden death reports quickly went viral after a “coded” tweet sent by Snowden on August 5th led some to speculate that he’d been murdered. Snowden’s attorney quickly released a statement clarifying that Snowden was “alive and well.”
Still, rumors that Snowden had been found dead in Russia persisted. Those rumors were largely fueled by Get off the BS, a fringe website that publishes a combination of news, satire and commentary from a right-wing point of view. The site published a story under the headline “Mistress of Edward Snowden Pronounces Snowden Dead in Russia” that begins:
Late Monday afternoon, the mistress of the infamous Edward Snowden announced the death of Snowden, who was allegedly killed this past Saturday by a drunken knife wielding Buryat man in the Republic of Buryatia.
MKRU News (Russia) reported this past Saturday that a drunken man who for some reason took exception to a man, presumably Snowden, saving his wife from drowning, attacked a woman by slicing her neck and stabbed her male companion in the thigh, who later died from severe blood loss in a local hospital.
But the MKRU News story that Get off the BS links to makes no mention of Edward Snowden’s death. The story is about a Buryatia local who was arrested after attacking a group of young people at a lake with a knife.
MKRU News didn’t report Snowden’s death anywhere else on the site, either.
Disclose.tv, a website based in Germany that publishes articles written by its community of readers “as is” with no fact checking or editing, fueled rumors of Snowden’s death by picking up the story. That version was quickly shared thousands of times on social media.
But in its disclaimer, the site states that, “All posts and media uploads on Disclose.tv are the expressed opinion of the contributing member and are in no way representative or endorsed by the owners or employees of Disclose.tv.”
That means the site doesn’t trust articles written by its contributors — and neither should you.
There’s not truth to reports that Edward Snowden was found dead in Russia — and Snowden’s attorney has directly dispelled those rumors as well.