People are spreading misinformation about Alec Baldwin and the on-set incident that killed a cinematographer

• On Thursday, Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on a movie set that killed the director of photography.
• Misinformation about the incident began to spread online almost immediately.

People are spreading misinformation about the on-set incident in which Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun loaded with a live round that killed the film's director of photography and injured the film's director.

Halyna Hutchins, 42, the cinematographer for the Baldwin-produced film titled "Rust," was shot and killed after he discharged the prop, authorities said.

The director, Joel Souza, 48, was also shot, and has since been released from the hospital, "Rust" cast member Frances Fisher tweeted early Friday.

Some people online are claiming that the message board 4chan broke the news about the accidental shooting. But Variety published their story about the incident 15 minutes before it appeared on 4chan, according to timestamps of the posts.

Variety's tweet about sheriffs responding to an "incident" on the set of "Rust" was posted at 6:51 PM on Thursday, while the 4chan thread about the incident appeared at 7:06 PM, more than 10 minutes later. The 4chan post included a picture of Baldwin holding a gun (a scene from the 2020 movie "Pixie") and said "Alec Baldwin has just shot two people on set with an accidentally loaded blank gun. Story will leak soon....."

Other 4chan users speculated that the anonymous poster worked on the set of "Rust" and rushed to post details as news outlets were made aware of the incident. However, given the close timing between local news reports and the 4chan post, it's possible that the poster could have used information found online.

Additionally, Snopes reported that fake newspaper clippings are circulating with misinformation about the event.

The first clip, shared in a tweet by user David Awfulbot, claimed that Baldwin joked about shooting the pair before firing the prop gun.

But Snopes reported that paragraphs included in the tweet appear to have been grabbed from Variety's original reporting with a false quote inserted into the text.

A second bogus clip that apparently had been pulled and edited from the original Fox News story falsely claimed that Baldwin had been ranting about Donald Trump on set, waving the prop gun around, when he discharged the firearm at the crew, according to Snopes.