A rumor that the network television channel will fire its news staff circulated online in September 2024. For example, the Facebook page America - Love It Or Leave It posted the claim on Sept. 24:
ABC To Fire Its News Staff: Time To Get Back To Being The American Broadcasting Company
(Facebook/ALLOD)
Some readers seemed to interpret the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. However, there was no evidence of ABC announcing it would fire or remove its news team.
Rather, the rumor about the channel firing its news team originated with America - Love It Or Leave It, which is part of the America's Last Line of Defense (ALLOD) network — a network of websites and social media accounts that describes its output as being humorous or "satirical" in nature. Its main page on Facebook states:
A subsidiary of the America's Last Line of Defense network of trollery. Nothing on this page is real.
The fictional story spread after former U.S. President Donald Trump called for the firing of the ABC news team, accusing them of being biased against him during the Sept. 10 debate.
ALLOD and its affiliates have a history of making up stories for social media engagement, sometimes relying on artificial-intelligence software to do its storytelling.
Snopes has addressed satirical claims Democratic Minnesota Gov. and vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz's brother Jeff had called Walz a bully, and another asserting that ABC had fired debate moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.