Oops! Fox News mistakenly posts photo of KC developer with mystery death story
It’s been said there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
Well, that wasn’t the case for Kansas City developer and TikTok star Johnny Youssef who, this week, discovered that his photo had mistakenly been posted on the national Fox News site beneath a headline on the mystery deaths of three Kansas City Chiefs fans.
“I had like, literally, 30 people in the last 48 hours message me about what’s going on,” Youssef told The Star on Wednesday.
Youssef said the mistake seemed obvious. On the Fox site, the headline on a story first published on Jan. 22 reads “3 Kansas City Chiefs fans found frozen outside home of friend who had ‘no knowledge’ of deaths: lawyer.”
But then, a photo of Youssef popped up directly beneath it that is part of a video from last September on his ongoing development of a Kansas City church, and his problem with robberies and 911 response. There was no break between the two pieces.
Youssef called Fox, asking the news outlet to put a break between the two stories, and he published a note on his Instagram page: “Well, I was on Fox News front page but they decided to put my story under mystery murder case and it looks like I’m guilty.”
“I’m more having fun with it,” Youssef told The Star, ”because people are messaging me about it.”
Youssef said he emailed Fox about it, “and they said they would take care of it. … I had a friend who said his heart just dropped when he saw the story.”
Youssef, with a 105,000 Instagram followers and 102,000 on TikTok, is pouring some $3 million into renovating the 100-year-old Broadway Baptist Church, at Broadway and 39th Terrace, into a wedding venue that is expected to open this spring. He is also redoing a circa 1902 home known as the Rockhill Clubhouse, at 610 Emanuel Cleaver II Blvd. in the affulent Rockhill neighborhood near the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Youseff checked the Fox site late in the afternoon on Wednesday. All was OK.
“They updated it,” Youssef said. “Thank God it’s gone.”
