STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In this country, some online influencers have been determined to see for themselves what is not happening in Springfield, Ohio. Former President Donald Trump picked up a fake internet story about Haitians eating pets. Local authorities say there's no evidence of this, and some of the residents who were sources for the claims have since said they were mistaken and apologized, none of which deters the influencers from seeking attention in Springfield. So NPR's Huo Jingnan reported from Springfield, too.
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TYLER OLIVEIRA: This is Springfield, Ohio.
HUO JINGNAN, BYLINE: Tyler Oliveira is curly haired and personable. He also has millions of followers on YouTube and calls himself a YouTuber-turned-investigative journalist.
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OLIVEIRA: I pulled up to Springfield myself to see if this was real or overblown fake news.
HUO: He talked to a man who claimed he saw Haitians carrying away, quote, "over a hundred cats in a white van."
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I watched it happen, yeah. I watched them get pulled over with the cats and admit to the police that they was eating them.
HUO: But Springfield police said there have been no substantiated claims of animal abduction, which Oliveira does not mention in the video. When his quest to find concrete evidence of pet eating in Springfield came up empty, he started looking at more allegations about the Haitians who have recently arrived in the city. Other residents tell Oliveira that the Haitians are bad drivers. But the city doesn't collect data on the nationality of those who are involved in crashes, so the claim also lacks factual basis.
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OLIVEIRA: (Speaking Spanish).
HUO: That video also showed a short clip of a Haitian man driving sandwiched between videos of a car crashed into a building and another car flipped over on a curb.
VILES DORSAINVIL: He took my video on the internet and put it in there, and he portrayed me as the person driving.
HUO: Viles Dorsainvil is the man in the video, and he says he had nothing to do with those accidents. We caught up with him at the Haitian Community Help & Support Center. Dorsainvil says he had to calm down another Haitian man whose image was edited to look like he was holding a cat in the thumbnail of Oliveira's video.
DORSAINVIL: He was so afraid. He was crying because he believed that would cause him some harm, not being able to work.
HUO: That man did not respond to interview requests. Many people we spoke to in Springfield were reluctant to speak to us on the record. Oliveira didn't respond to NPR for comment. Another media figure, prominent conservative Chris Rufo, told his followers he will pay $5,000 to anyone who sent him evidence that Haitians were eating pets in Springfield. Days later, Rufo posted a grainy video that claimed to show a cat on a grill last year in Dayton, about 30 miles away.
The intense attention has been hard on many people in Springfield. I met Juneor Bellevue (ph) at a popular Haitian Creole restaurant on the south side of town. He says he moved to Springfield about a year and a half ago to escape gang violence in Haiti. While he feels safe here, he says his family no longer does.
JUNEOR BELLEVUE: My mom, she wants to leave, my sister as well, because they are afraid.
HUO: Locations all over the city have received bomb threats in the past week, and neo-Nazis and far-right groups have held marches here. A few doors down, Tangee Hepp manages a public library branch.
TANGEE HEPP: The media coverage across the board has just added, I think, to everyone's anxiety. I have seen a lot of just random or those independent journalists who are just walking around with their phone interviewing people.
HUO: She has been watching videos about Springfield online. She saw Oliveira's video and feels that it didn't fully represent all the different views of Springfield's residents.
HEPP: I also didn't see him interview anyone at City Hall or police department, fire division.
HUO: Hepp's library branch often hosts the library system's only Creole interpreter, and she's worried about the branch becoming a target.
HEPP: I have spent some time crying about it because I can't protect my staff. I'm just one person.
HUO: In the same strip mall, Haitian American business owner Jacob Payen lets us into his store.
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JACOB PAYEN: This is my business. I own this small business here in town. You can come in.
HUO: His religious supply store sells incense and prayer candles, among other things.
PAYEN: My business has not been the way it was because most of my clients, they're afraid to leave their houses.
HUO: When Payen is not running his business, he's a spokesperson for the Haitian Community Alliance. He hasn't been interviewed by an influencer yet but says he would be happy to speak with one.
PAYEN: Maybe I can convince them to change their mind at the end of our conversation.
HUO: Even though a lot of the influencers' videos portray Haitians as a burden.
PAYEN: I strongly believe that these people, they're not evil. They're just lost.
HUO: He hopes that people getting a glimpse of everyday Haitian life through these videos will stop seeing the community as a threat.
Huo Jingnan, NPR News, Springfield. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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