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Did Frances Coppola, a senior journalist at Forbes, post the following tweet?

Text below

@shoerster I bet they did. I suspect anti-immigration people of organising the Cologne sex crimes. Fastest way of getting borders closed.

The screenshot is from a tweet by Rita Panahi, and the allegation was also made in the Herald Sun (paywalled), a major Australian tabloid newspaper, in a column by Panahi called "The sexual assaults in Cologne show even the harshest facts must be faced" (January 11, 2016):

Meanwhile Forbes senior journalist Frances Coppola posted a comment alleging a vast conspiracy: “I suspect anti-immigration people of organising the Cologne sex crimes. Fastest way of getting borders closed.”

I also came across an article in the neo-nazi site The Daily Stormer (Wikipedia description) Forbes Journalist: “I Suspect Anti-Immigration ppl of Organising the Cologne Sex Crimes”, which has an archive.is link of the alleged tweet. However, archive.is explicitly denies that it can be trusted not to doctor or alter pages:

How do end users know that archived pages aren't doctored or altered?

Many pages are altered. Main reason is to remove a popup or login box covering the content.

I'm not that skeptical that some people allege a false-flag attack: for example, this tweet and this one are non-parodic tweets (favorited and retweeted by antisemites) claiming that Jews masterminded this attack by asylum seekers.

George Chalhoub
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Andrew Grimm
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  • I do have this person on my following list, do I search for the post and post it as an answer if found, or mods would consider it original research? – George Chalhoub Jan 12 '16 at 14:35
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    If you can find the tweet at the appropriate point in Sklivvz's conversation, posting what was its original URL could be useful even if it doesn't currently go anywhere - there might be some way to corroborate it with a 3rd party archive service – user56reinstatemonica8 Jan 12 '16 at 15:58
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    Downvoting this. Because it's about whether one low-level celebrity made one controversial tweet. – DJClayworth Jan 12 '16 at 16:33
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    @DJClayworth she's not a celebrity, nor is her journalism about entertainment - as mentioned, she's a journalist at Forbes. – Andrew Grimm Jan 12 '16 at 20:38
  • @AndrewGrimm - actually, she's NOT a "senior journalist". Her Forbes page simply says she's a "Contributor". Which makes her non-entity and I admit I fail to see the notability evidence here. Random person saying something random on Twitter. – user5341 Jan 15 '16 at 17:21
  • @user5341 Panahi states that she's a senior journalist in the paragraph quoted. – Andrew Grimm Jan 15 '16 at 22:29
  • @AndrewGrimm - I would believe a person's personal bio page at the newspaper they work for over a twitter user :) – user5341 Jan 15 '16 at 22:31
  • @user5341 Panahi's newspaper column, not her tweet. – Andrew Grimm Jan 15 '16 at 22:38

1 Answers1

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Her tweets are now protected so it's hard to say.

However I think I found the preceding and subsequent tweet by her counterpart, the German "management consultant and economist" Bastian van Rieth. The dates work and the conversation flows -- the tweet you present can still have been manipulated though. @Frances_Coppola Neither can a lot of people here - but the right wing press had an immediate knee jerk response

@Frances_Coppola Neither can a lot of people here - but the right wing press had an immediate knee jerk response

Then her reply

@shoerster I bet they did. I suspect anti-immigration people of organising the Cologne sex crimes. Fastest way of getting borders closed.

Then his follow up

@Frances_Coppola I wouldn't go that far, but they are definitely exploiting the events.

@Frances_Coppola I wouldn't go that far, but they are definitely exploiting the events.

Sklivvz
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