An image of Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez showing her allegedly tearing the United States Constitution began circulating around the web over this past weekend.
Emma Gonzalez, the 18-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student, delivered a moving speech to thousands of people during the March for Our Lives rally in Washington DC. During her speech, she named the murdered Parkland victims and stood in silence for several minutes. The six-minute, 20-second speech was crafted to be the same time it took the gunman to kill 17 people at Stoneman Douglas high school on February 14.
After her speech was heard by thousands at the rally and millions of people around the country, images and videos of Gonzalez showing her tearing up the Constitution quickly began to circulate around the web.
Did Emma Gonzalez tear up the Constitution?
No, she did not. The original image is from the March cover story by Teen Vogue magazine about gun violence. They tweeted the short video on Friday, March 23. The clip shows Gonzalez standing in front of three young activists and tearing a gun range target paper in half.
The image was altered in Photoshop to show Gonzalez ripping the Constitution in half and has spread quicker on social media than the original image. It’s not clear where the Photoshopped image originated from, but according to CNN versions of the image including a .GIF image surfaced on the popular site 4Chan in the “politically incorrect” section.
The doctored image prompted Teen Vogue chief content officer Phillip Picardi to take to Twitter to release a statement about the fake image and set the record straight for anyone who believed she was tearing up the Constitution.
At left is @tyler_mitchell’s photo of @Emma4Change for the cover of @TeenVogue. At right is what so-called “Gun Rights Activists” have photoshopped it into. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/jW6tTOv2Db
— Phillip Picardi (@pfpicardi) March 25, 2018
“The fact that we even have to clarify this is proof of how democracy continues to be fractured by people who manipulate and fabricate the truth,” Picardi wrote.
The fact that we even have to clarify this is proof of how democracy continues to be fractured by people who manipulate and fabricate the truth. pic.twitter.com/cpSXnvLxdA
— Phillip Picardi (@pfpicardi) March 25, 2018
