Fake newspaper clip says a teenage Pete Buttigieg killed dogs. He didn’t

Former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg is the first openly gay candidate to run for president. He’s also a veteran, a millennial, an Episcopalian and left-handed.

But is he a dog killer? No.

A fake newspaper clipping, sometimes alongside a photo of a teenage Buttigieg, is going around the internet claiming he was arrested in the late 1990s for killing several dogs.

Several Facebook posts shared the clip and asked: "Why won’t anyone discuss why a teenage Buttigieg strangled 5 dogs?"

But the "story" was created using the Newspaper Clipping Generator, an online tool that allows people to produce images of news snippets. In this case, the clip implicates a real news source, the South Bend Tribune, which never published the story.

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The phony clip shows an Aug. 30, 1998, date and a headline that reads: "Teen Arrested for Dog Slayin." The snippet says "local teen, Peter Buttigieg, has been arrested on suspicion of the recent killings of at least 5 dogs."

The clipping’s creator first shared it on Twitter on Feb. 8; it has amassed thousands of retweets. The user, @ComradeCrow, has repeatedly said the story is fake and was intended as a joke. 

The Buttigieg campaign did not respond to comment on the fake article, but the South Bend Tribune published a response and said "everything about the image screamed bogus." 

"Even though that Twitter user admitted Sunday night he intended the fabrication as a joke, The Tribune was still receiving calls and messages Monday afternoon hoping to verify the story. Some thanked us for clarifying it; others angrily denounced us for ‘covering up for Pete,’ " the newspaper wrote. "So let’s just make this perfectly clear: The Tribune did not publish the story making the rounds."

We rate this Pants on Fire!