Photo: WENN
Reports that surfaced yesterday claiming that Beyonce and Jay Z were attempting to buy the rights to the Confederate flag have proven not to be true.
Last month, 21-year-old Dylann Roof walked into a church in Charleston, South Carolina and shot dead nine African American people. A website apparently published by Roof that included a manifesto detailing his white supremacist views served as evidence that the attack was racially motivated.
After the Charleston shooting, the Confederate flag (a controversial symbol of America's slavery legacy) flying over the South Carolina Confederate Monument was the only one that not flown at half-mast - because state law prohibits alteration of the flag without the consent of two-thirds of the state legislature.
Many high-profile celebrities, politicans and brands took the opportunity to condemn the flag's continuing existence, and reports began circulating, supposedly via their lawyer Ralph Hammerstein, that Beyonce and Jay Z were attempting to buy the rights to the flag to prevent its continued use.
However, as the good people of Reddit pointed out, Newswatch33, the website that broke the story, is not to be trusted. While it's not explicitly satirical, some past headlines include "Obama Expected To Sign Executive Order Entitling African-Americans To Reparations" and "New NASA Data Shows World Will Run Out Of Oxygen In 2016."
Not only that, but Ralph Hammerstein does not appear to actually exist. False alarm.
