Waleed Aly’s wife Susan Carland is forced to defend the Project host after he’s slammed over a satirical article that suggested he incited race wars
- Waleed Aly’s wife has defended him after he was criticised on social media
- A satirical article was published suggesting Aly incited race wars in Australia
- Twitter users did not realise the article was satire and demanded he be fired
Waleed Aly’s wife Susan Carland has defended him after he was criticised on social media after a satirical article suggested he purposefully incited race wars.
The Project host was trending on Twitter on Monday after XYZ published an article about him titled: ‘Waleed Aly applauds African gang who assaulted young girl at train station for ‘courageously standing up to white privilege”.
The basis of the story was entirely made up, as proven by a tag above the headline which identified it as satire.
But the small tag did little to deter countless Twitter users, who assumed the story was legitimate and addressed their fury online.
Waleed Aly has faced backlash on social media after a satirical article suggested he purposefully incited race wars
The basis of the story was entirely made up, as proven by a tag above the headline which identified it as satire
A petition calling for his resignation reached close to 190 signatures before it was closed when the creator realised they had fallen for a satirical article.
‘I have made the decision to remove my petition because the issue has been proven to be fake news,’ the creator said.
‘I do apologise for any inconvenience and am mature enough to admit that I was stooged.’
His wife, academic Susan Carland, also shared the article on her Twitter with a caption that read: ‘For God’s sake people this is not real.’
‘I’m not upset. Weird & blatantly untrue things about my husband are merrily posted online regularly & most I ignore. But this astounded me because so many people believed something so obviously fake.’
The article references made up quotes about wanting to incite race wars, alleging that Aly made them on air.
The basis of the story was entirely made up, as proven by a tag above the headline which identified it as satire
Waleed Aly (pictured with his wife Susan Carland at opening night of Billy Elliot: The Musical) has not responded to the comments
‘I’ve been doing my best all these past, painstaking few weeks to trigger an unnecessary race war and it’s times like this where you look at yourself in the mirror and think it was all worth it,’ the article claims Aly said.
A spokesman for The Project was responding to tweets referencing the article on Sunday, assuring readers that the comments did not come from Aly.
‘As you’ll see at the top of the article, it says ‘satire’. Incredibly poor taste, but essentially someone has written this thinking it’s funny or clever. It has no basis of truth or fact whatsoever,’ one of the statements read.
While some called for the outspoken television host to be sacked, most people quickly realised they’d been had and apologised for jumping to conclusions.
Aly has not yet personally responded to the controversy.