FACT CHECK: No, CNN Didn’t Publish An Article On The DC Aircraft Collision Before It Happened

A post shared on Facebook claims CNN published an article on the Washington, D.C. aircraft collision before it actually happened.

Verdict: False

There is no evidence that this occurred. CNN denied the claim to other outlets.

Fact Check:

Social media users are claiming that CNN pre-wrote articles about the collision between an American Airlines aircraft and a U.S. military helicopter that killed 67 people before it occurred.

“CNN had pre-written articles about the Washington crash HOURS before it even occurred and numerous people have the receipts,” reads one user’s post. (RELATED: Claim That Trump Plans To Invalidate Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program Is Satire)

This claim is false. The metadata of the article shows that it was not published until after the crash occurred, according to Logically Facts. One article was published around 11pm EST, per the metadata. The crash occurred around 9pm EST, per the Federal Aviation Administration.

A CNN spokesperson told Logically Facts that the outlet “covered the tragic news on the Potomac after it happened and after local sources and the FAA learned about it and confirmed the news.”

The claim appears to rest on timestamps on Google. A Google spokesperson told Lead Stories that “systems automatically make the best determinations possible on timestamps” and that “sometimes dates listed in Search may be wrong.”