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Notre Dame burning discussion: It's the cathedral, not the university on fire | TribLIVE.com
U.S./World

Notre Dame burning discussion: It's the cathedral, not the university on fire

Patrick Varine
Patrick Varine
1026970_web1_AFP_1FO25B
A man watches the landmark Notre-Dame Cathedral burn, engulfed in flames, in central Paris on April 15, 2019. - A huge fire swept through the roof of the famed Notre-Dame Cathedral in central Paris on April 15, 2019, sending flames and huge clouds of grey smoke billowing into the sky. The flames and smoke plumed from the spire and roof of the gothic cathedral, visited by millions of people a year. A spokesman for the cathedral told AFP that the wooden structure supporting the roof was being gutted by the blaze. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP/Getty Images

The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is on fire. Not the University of Notre Dame.

As is the case nowadays with much of social media, the rush to be quickest or to tweet first has led to a bit of confusion in the Twitterverse.

Here is an actual video of the actual fire.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time the cathedral has burned. It was shelled during World War II and subsequently rebuilt.

A Notre Dame Cathedral spokesperson told Bloomberg News that “Everything is burning. Nothing will remain.”

However, the cavalcade of misunderstanding (and of course, retweeting) was just getting started.

Here we go.

Twitter user @propertwelve took the opportunity to chastise self-obsessed Americans.

Cue the onslaught of people who apparently trust Twitter to bring them legitimate, fact-checked news…

Some folks inexplicably would’ve been excited if it was the university rather than the church, which is kind of weird and unsettling.

Unverified tweeting was running so rampant that the university was compelled to issue a clarification tweet of its own.

There were, however, plenty of people tweeting their sympathies.

And finally, there’s this bizarre tweet somehow linking the two together.

In summary, Twitter: not the greatest place to get reliable news.

Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com.

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Categories: News | U.S./World
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