Veteran ABC journalist Barrie Cassidy (pictured) has been caught out falling for fake news about Charlie Kirk's alleged killer, wrongly claiming that the suspect was a right-wing extremist, before apologising for the mistake. In a post reshared on social media, the former host of Insiders claimed: 'The apparent shooter was a straight white conservative Mormon from Utah who thought Charlie Kirk wasn't far enough to the right.'
The problem? That was completely false. Utah's governor and investigators had already indicated that Robinson was influenced by left-wing ideology. 'There clearly was a leftist ideology,' Governor Spencer Cox said. 'Friends have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet, the Reddit culture, and these other dark places of the internet where this person was going deep.'
Cox also revealed the suspect's partner was transgender, something some politicians pointed to as a possible reason Robinson targeted Kirk for his anti-transgender views. However, authorities have not confirmed whether it was relevant to the motive. 'The roommate was a romantic partner, a male transitioning to female,' Cox said. 'I can say that he has been incredibly cooperative; this partner has been very cooperative; had no idea that this was happening.'
Mr Cassidy quickly deleted the post from his social media account, but by then his blunder had already spread online. Sky News presenter Rita Panahi wrote: 'Barrie Cassidy has deleted, but that he would post such lies about the Charlie Kirk suspect being 'MAGA' shows AGAIN what an utter [expletive]clown he is ... and always has been.'
Mr Cassidy has since apologised for the mistake and said he was incredibly embarrassed. 'It was Saturday morning when I first went on X and I saw posts about Donald Trump saying that radicals on the left are the problem and they're vicious and they're horrible,' he told Steve Jackson's Media Diary in the Australian newspaper.
'Then I read a post from a news anchor in Utah - and he was saying authority sources had made that claim to him, that the gunman believed Kirk wasn't far enough to the right. 'Close to that there was another post from an analyst ... saying friends of the killer were claiming he had an association with ... what was clearly a right-wing group.
'Based on that, I posted what I did. It would have only been about an hour or two when I went back on Twitter and I read some of the comments and I realised my sources weren't credible or strong enough and I immediately deleted the post.'