SELMA — A protester outside The Selma Times-Journal caused a stir when he reported on his radio show about a Confederate flag hanging from a forklift at the Interpretive Center across the intersection of Water Avenue and Broad Street.

Only the Confederate flag wasn’t confederate or a flag at all. It was bunting found by a construction worker for Frasier-Ousley Construction and Engineering Inc. in the building under construction. The red, white and blue bunting provided a frame for a handmade counter protest sign that read, “Selma Times #1.” A worker posted the sign during the lunch hour.

Franklin Fortier, the lone protester and radio show host at WBFZ 105.3, said, “I don’t know what the flag is. It looked like a Confederate flag to me. It’s not the flag we operate under, so I just thought it looked like a Confederate flag.”

Fortier, the son-in-law of state Sen. Hank Sanders, and others have mounted a month-long protest of the newspaper, accusing it of not reporting Cecil Williamson holding the position of president of the Selma City Council and belonging to a “hate group.”

After the 20-minute protest by Fortier, he announced on his radio show that a Confederate flag was hanging from the work site.

The accusation prompted David Ousley, co-owner of Frasier-Ousley Construction, to investigate the allegation. He ordered workers to take down the sign immediately along with the bunting.

“I’m upset that somebody who has as large an audience as Franklin Fortier does as a local disc jockey would feel the need to say something that inflammatory that wasn’t true, and he knows it wasn’t true,” Ousley said. “And then he spent three hours talking on the radio about something that he knows wasn’t true.”

Fortier said he retracted the statement about the Confederate flag on the radio.

The incident caused some to look askance at the protesters.

““They’ve been hollering ‘the truth, the truth, the truth’ for God knows how long and the first … thing that comes out of their mouth, they tell a … lie. There wasn’t no Confederate flag flying,” said Dean Langston, a superintendent for the construction company.

Listen to the interview with Franklin Fortier here (There are a few seconds of noise before the sound begins):