January 29, 2019. Actor Jussie Smollett told Chicago police he'd been attacked by two men who yelled slurs and "MAGA country," put a noose on him and poured a chemical on him. Politicians and outlets across the mainstream press treated his account as a confirmed hate crime before police were done. FNN didn't pin down one CNN segment to quote, so this page goes after the press as a whole. Breitbart counted at least a dozen prominent journalists who amplified it early.

Court record only. Chicago police said Smollett staged the attack with two brothers he knew. Cook County prosecutors dropped the first set of charges in 2019. A special prosecutor re-charged him. In December 2021, a jury convicted him on five counts of disorderly conduct for false police reports. In November 2024, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that the second prosecution violated his earlier non-prosecution agreement. That was a procedural ruling. It did not find him innocent on the facts. In May 2025, he settled the city's lawsuit for investigation costs by donating $50,000 to a Chicago arts charity (Chicago Sun-Times, NYT).

FNN analysis: real hate crimes need belief. Every rushed endorsement of a story that later falls apart makes the next real victim's story harder to sell. Gallup's 2019 trust: 41%. It has fallen almost every year since.