Tim Burke

Career

While at the University of South Florida in 2006, Burke created the blog Mocksession.com, which captured "esoteric" screengrabs and clips from live sports broadcasts, including in GIF form. He was known for publishing videos and animated GIFs of offbeat and unusual moments during live sports and news broadcasts, which were posted to the Deadspin website and Twitter under the name @bubbaprog. Burke's content included awkward moments for sportscasters and fans, on-field incidents, bloopers, and errors in news broadcasts. He left Deadspin in 2018 following several contract buyouts at Gawker Media under their new ownership. He also published a video collage of news anchors at 45 local Sinclair Broadcasting television stations reading an identical script about fake news in 2018; the video subsequently went viral and received national attention. Burke also ran other projects, such as Twitter bots that posted breaking news based on closed caption feeds of news networks, alongside his video content.

Tucker Carlson case

Burke was the source of two leaked clips from Tucker Carlson Tonight, a Fox News talk show, that were published by Vice in October 2022 and Media Matters for America in April 2023. The clips showed host Tucker Carlson, who left Fox News shortly before Media Matters published the footage, making sexist and "uncouth remarks"; the Vice clip included discussions between Carlson and rapper Kanye West that included anti-Semitic material. Burke's home was raided and searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on May 8, 2023, serving a warrant related to the Tucker Carlson case according to the Tampa Bay Times.

On February 22, 2024, Burke was arrested and issued with 14 federal charges related to the case, including one count of conspiracy and several counts of wiretapping. though other reports indicate Burke and his co-conspirator misappropriated credentials belonging to CBS News that were accidentally posted on a radio station website.

The case has been criticized by the Freedom of Press Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union for breaches of the freedom of press. They live in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Burke is on the board of directors for Jobsite Theater, a Tampa-based nonprofit theater company.