President Obama Secretly Met with Ferguson Protesters?

Claim:   President Obama secretly met with Ferguson protesters and urged them to "stay on course."

MOSTLY FALSE

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, November 2014]

Origins: On 17 November 2014, several political blogs

reported President Barack Obama "secretly" met with "Ferguson protesters" on 5 November 2014. The reports began to circulate just as Missouri Governor Jay Nixon proactively declared a state of emergency pending a grand jury decision over whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot Ferguson teenager Mike Brown.

According to rumors, President Obama met in secret with "Ferguson protesters" as soon as the 2014 midterm elections concluded. Many of the blog posts alluded to deliberate concealment of the purported meeting, insinuating the President was essentially delivering a covert message to the protesters ahead of potential civil unrest in Ferguson. One commonly circulating account suggested even the New York Times was in on the subterfuge:

Another blog claimed:

Going by blog posts alone, one would think President Obama was directing protesters in Ferguson to brace for a lack of indictment in the case and riot in response. But did the President really secretly meet with "Ferguson protestors" on 5 November 2014 and express his concerns about staying some unspecified course?

The White House's schedule for 5 November 2014 lists four events, none of them involving "Ferguson protesters": On the schedule for that day were two briefings, a press conference, and a reception hosted by Vice President Joe Biden to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month. However, reports indicate President Obama held an off-the-schedule meeting that day with civil rights leaders, including Rev. Al Sharpton. The claim about President Obama's secret meeting with "Ferguson protesters" appears to stem solely from an article published in the New York Times on 16 November 2014 which mentioned that meeting.

Blog posts claim the Times "buried" mention of the President's 5 November meeting with civil rights leaders at the tail end of its story. But the article in question was a broad discussion of Missouri's preparations for the Darren Wilson indictment decision, not a report on President Obama's putative conversations with Ferguson "protesters," so the meeting was tangential to the thrust of the story. The contextless excerpt from that story which has been widely circulated doesn't really represent the article's narrative, which read (in context):

The referenced meeting does not appear to have been specifically about the Ferguson protests, nor did earlier news reports mention that the topic had been discussed:

Even sources that are heavily critical of the President and reported (prior to publication of the Times article) Obama met with Sharpton on 5 November 2014 did not mention Ferguson, Missouri, or the pending grand jury decision regarding Darren Wilson:

On 5 November 2014, the meeting was also reported in Beltway-centric blogs. Again, no mention was made of the topic of potential civil unrest in Ferguson coming up in the meeting:

So President Obama did meet with the Rev. Al Sharpton, among others, on 5 November 2014; but he did not meet with "Ferguson protesters" (unless one counts Sharpton, who has visited Ferguson, as a "protester"). The meeting was not conducted with a group of demonstrators, but rather with leaders of civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the National Urban League; and it was widely reported on mainstream news sites and blogs. The discussion at that meeting was not specifically about events in Missouri, and President Obama's only reported comment on that issue (which was related second-hand by the Rev. Sharpton) was an expressed desire to see civil rights leaders work to promote peace during potentially difficult days to come in Ferguson.

Last updated:   18 November 2014

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