Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted a claim about missing kids that parrots a QAnon conspiracy theory and misrepresents FBI data – By Lindsay Dodgson (Insider) / December 13, 2021
- Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted that 365,348 children went missing in 2020.
- The tweet misrepresents FBI data, as nearly 95% of that group was classified as runaways.
- The QAnon conspiracy theory popularized the idea that American children are being abducted en masse.
Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s claim that hundreds of thousands of children went missing in 2020 misrepresents US government data and is “potentially quite harmful,” according to John K. Roman, a senior fellow in the Economics, Justice, and Society Group at NORC at the University of Chicago.
Boebert, a Republican, tweeted on Saturday that “365,348 children went missing in 2020” and criticized “the media” for lacking coverage of that statistic. “There enlies the problem,” she added, appearing to intend to use the phrase, “therein lies.”
While that number is technically correct — there were 365,348 reports of missing children entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database last year — nearly 95% of those were categorized as runaways, or children who leave home without permission and stay away for at least one night, the agency said in its 2020 report.
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