Note: This article is also available in Spanish.

Hello. If you’re arriving here for the first time from another source, let us start with the basics: there is no boycott of Mad Max Fury Road, or any Hollywood film, by Men’s Rights Activists. The “boycott” is a completely fabricated story by a handful of elitists abusing their power in the media–and betraying their fellow journalists while doing it.

So let’s get it clear: The story of the MRA boycott of the Hollywood film is false. If you believed it, you were sucked in by a liar. The question is, who’s the source of the lie, and why were they lying?

The phony story of the MRA boycott seems to have started over the weekend, and has only picked up steam in the press in the following days, despite multiple people and organizations reaching out to inform the press that the story was false. It appears to have originated from a discredited hate-blogger named David Futrelle, well known for his racist and sexist remarks, as well as his historic child rape apologia.

Carolyn Cox and The Mary Sue have acknowledged the hate-blogger as their source, but have refused further comment on their fake story so far. So has Jenny Kutner of Salon, who appears to now have blocked anyone who asks her about the misreporting.

Jessica Goodman, an ideological feminist (we are told) also repeated the fake story on the Huffington Post. Most fascinating, after being informed that the story is fake, Goodman appears to have merely reworded her headline and clumsily edited her article, although the last we looked it was still contradicting itself and making claims verified to be factually false. Goodman has not apologized, retracted, nor clarified, and has refused comment when asked.

In the meantime, CNN and The Hollywood Reporter then astonishingly picked up the already publicly discredited story, and have since refused to comment despite multiple inquiries.

We begin to suspect that Loren O’Neill has betrayed at least one of her fellow CNN reporters, as the famed S.E. Cupp tweeted the now-debunked story, and when called out on it, denied responsibility and refused further comment when asked.

Let us be clear: any claim that Men’s Rights Activists are in any way boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road is misreported at best. If any person in the media tells you of this purported boycott, you need to correct them, and if they refuse to acknowledge the correction, you need to complain to their editors. If they continue to repeat the lie, they are smearing and slandering innocent human rights activists. This is an abuse of power.

So far we’ve found this fake story metastasizing in multiple places. Matt Kamen and Dave Thier, and Anthony Furey have all run this unsubstantiated and totally debunked story. There is no MRA boycott, almost none of the people being quoted are MRAs, and perhaps most damning of all, none of these media sources chose to reach out to Men’s Rights Activists to confirm the story or call anything in it into question.

I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but this is a trust-shattering oversight at best for every one of these reporters–although I hasten to add that at least some of them can regain honor by simply apologizing and printing a clarification. If they care about the truth, they need to get a move on; even our friends in the Spanish-speaking world are picking up the bogus, already-discredited story, and repeating it. Examples include De Bruno Carmelo, Agencias, and 20 Minutos.

This is serious. The early creators of this bogus, debunked story are all running from the story and hiding from comment. Those of you who are in the press who were duped by your fellow journalists owe it to your readers, and your respective publications, to call these other reporters to task for misinforming the public. The mainstream media’s reputation is the lowest it has ever been. Is it time, perhaps, for some of you to dig in and recommit to telling the full story to your readers, regardless of who is made unhappy?

And by the way, we are really serious with this question: was anyone paid to put this fake story in the press? If so, who was paid and who did the paying?

Watch for further updates as we see if anyone, at all, in the mainstream media has the guts to report that this story is phony.

Update: An earlier version of this story accused a New York Post writer of repeating the smear campaign, however, we appear to have misidentified him.