If one wants to wrap their brain around why the leftist-establishment media complex has lost all credibility, this Tablet article by Konstantin Kisin from August is mandatory reading worth ten minutes of your time.
A snippet:
Imagine your outrage as you see news reports of a bunch of MAGA hat-wearing kids from a religious school contemptuously confront a Native American elder. Professional, adult commentators on TV tell you the kid has a “punchable face,” and while you abhor violence, it’s hard to disagree. Imagine that for days you watch coverage of these events, with expert after expert, pundit after pundit, sharing and fueling your outrage. Maybe your country really is racist. Maybe you’re racist. Were you always just blind?
Imagine that soon after, however, the Jussie Smollett story turns out to be an attention-seeking hoax: He made it all up. Imagine you also quickly discover that the Native American elder was the one who confronted the kids, and not the other way around. “If this is such a racist country,” you ask yourself, “why would they need to make up stories of racism?” As you ponder this, you remember that for years now, you’ve been expected to go along with other, more elaborate make-believe stories.
You’re expected to understand that gender is not as binary as school, your eyes, and your own experience have led you to believe. Whatever you learned about biology growing up is not only wrong, it’s pathological and harmful, according to the American Psychological Association. You no longer know how many genders you’re expected to be able to recognize. You do know that asking questions is dangerous.
Imagine that you still want to believe the experts and the commentators, but now that requires you to believe your country is racist, that men are bad, and that gender is a social construct, which is an idea you still don’t really understand. -Tablet
Fast forward to August 21. The FDA issues a tweet in response to people buying equine ivermectin due to systemic restrictions on the human-grade version which reads: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4
— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021
This absurd tweet from the Democrat-run federal agency patently ignores the fact that Ivermectin has been prescribed for humans for over 35 years, while several studies have shown efficacy in treating early-stage Covid-19 infections.
It didn’t matter. The message from the Biden administration was clear; ivermectin is a horse dewormer taken by idiots, and the left now had official license to make fun of ‘right-wing anti-vaxxers’ for using it to treat coronavirus.
So when Joe Rogan revealed that Ivermectin was one of the drugs he used to beat Covid within a few days, the left went to town – with MSM outlets wasting no opportunity to convince people that the extremely influential host of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is a nutcase.
Which brings us to Rolling Stone magazine’s biggest debacle since the UVA rape story – after they aggregated a (still uncorrected) local media report out of Oklahoma claiming that people overdosing on ivermectin horse dewormer are causing emergency rooms to be “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities. The claim was made by Dr. Jason McElyea, and the story went absolutely viral across a vast swath of left-wing influencers.
Until the hospital refuted it – announcing on their website that McElyea hadn’t worked there in more than two months, and they haven’t treated any ivermectin overdoses.
This failure of basic journalism wasn’t just committed by Rolling Stone. It was breathlessly repeated by large outlets, pundits, and doctors – all of whom failed to do a simple sniff test on an obviously suspicious story.
Journalist Drew Holden has pieced together the anatomy of yet another viral hoax peddled to millions of people as fact.
Take it away, Drew:
First, for context, here’s the original piece from @RollingStone and the follow up from the actual hospital saying the story was BS and that the one (one!) person the story quotes doesn’t work at that hospital anymore (and hasn’t in months). pic.twitter.com/6k4FjaQWD3
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
But the real champion of this tall tale was @MSNBC. @maddow had a tweet about it that went viral.
She’s got an audience of millions of people and couldn’t be bothered to even look into a story that pretty obviously doesn’t pass the sniff test. pic.twitter.com/t6sFrXDzrt
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
We even had an executive producer from MSNBC push the story that wasn’t. @laurenpeikoff
You know what’s a good way to not be derisively referred to as “fake news”?
Stop pushing fake news. pic.twitter.com/RwjjxslJ8U
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
I just really don’t understand why seemingly real news outlets – like @Newsweek @NYDailyNews and @thehill – didn’t bother to even look into this story before they pushed this narrative?
Didn’t it sound odd? Wasn’t it worth investigating? Maybe a single phone call? pic.twitter.com/ONStIZL87I
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
This sentiment was pretty widespread because it just fit the narrative perfectly – “look at these dumb hicks and their horse medication!” right, @dabeard? pic.twitter.com/rLpox5yuK0
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
And plenty of actual bad actors got involved in pushing this one, too. I don’t know how @DrEricDing hasn’t been kicked off of Twitter by now. He’s a bottomless well of misinformation. pic.twitter.com/8FA6ABNTTu
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
Obligatory @kurteichenwald mention. pic.twitter.com/ABFdSXiEzP
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
I don’t usually include people who aren’t verified but I couldn’t resist this one.@RVAwonk is a postdoc studying “mis/disinformation” and had a whole thread *actively pushing disinformation* pic.twitter.com/5qFL6OOqCK
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
See what I’m saying?@mims @EoinHiggins_ (quickly becoming a thread favorite)@GidMK (“health nerd”)@AngryBlackLady (this is definitely an illustrative example of something, just not the thing that you think it is) pic.twitter.com/QTfwvJlAFD
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
It should go without saying, but inventing a narrative out of thin air simply because it confirms your priors is not going to help rebuild trust in the media.
It would’ve taken a single phone call to shoot this story down.
Why didn’t that happen?
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
You won’t hear any. Because this is the acceptable type of political lie.
And none of these people or outlets will learn anything. They’ll keep doing this.
Because they care more about scoring cheap dunks on their opponents than getting the truth.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
