Jack Doohan has had enough of the online hate directed at his family. The trigger was a fake news story in which Doohan’s father allegedly mocked Franco Colapinto‘s crash in Imola. The news was reported as real by several Argentine media outlets, resulting in a flood of online hate messages towards the Doohan family. Doohan is now speaking out against it.
Franco Colapinto made his debut as a full-time driver for Alpine in Imola. The Argentine replaces Jack Doohan, who failed to impress enough in the first six races of the season to retain his seat. It was not the dream first Grand Prix weekend for Colapinto, as the driver crashed in Q1 of the qualifiers. He went just too far over the kerbstones and slammed into the tyre stack at full speed.
In response to Colapinto’s crash, a fake news story was thrown into the world by FormulaFakers, a parody account on X that spreads fake news. In the message, Mick Doohan, Jack Doohan’s father and world motor racing champion, was allegedly mocking Colapinto’s crash. Not everyone realized that the message was fake, and fans of the Argentine driver began to bombard Doohan with hate messages. The number of messages increased so much that Jack Doohan decided to speak out against it.
Doohan Speaks Out
“As you can clearly see, the story circulating above is completely untrue,” Doohan posted on his Instagram page. “It was concocted by Argentine fans trying to cast me and my family in a negative light. They have altered the original content to make it look like my father posted it, which is totally incorrect.” The Australian then makes an urgent appeal: “Please stop harassing my family. I didn’t expect it to come to this.””Doohan then posted a screenshot of the original post from FormulaFakers with the text: “This kind of content is so harmful.” Lastly, the Alpine reserve driver posted a small correction. “The source is not Argentinean. However, several Argentinean media outlets reported the fabricated image, which provoked online hatred towards my family.”
Apologies
Among others, ESPN Argentina and Fox Sports Argentina accepted the fake news as truth. The latter later offered their apologies. “We apologize for sharing incorrect information about Jack Doohan’s father,” read the official statement from Fox Sports Argentina.
FormulaFakers themselves, the source behind the fake news, also apologized. “It was a mistake to post the screenshot,” reads the statement from the parody account. “The Doohan family does not deserve to be attacked in the way that happened thanks to our fake news story. We did not expect our post to cause so much damage. We sincerely apologize to the Doohan family. This has truly opened our eyes to the effect that social media can have on real life.” The account says it will leave the original post up, so that in the future it can only be associated with the fake news account.
