Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵THREAD🧵

An explosive story from @NPR and @NinaTotenberg about supposed high drama around masking at the Supreme Court imploded today.

I want to take you through how misinformation like this gets mainstreamed by the corporate press and others.

Start here ⤵️

First, some background. @NPR reporter @NinaTotenberg reported that tensions were high at SCOTUS, particularly because Justice Gorsuch had supposedly refused a request from Chief Justice Roberts to put on a mask to help protect Justice Sotomayor.

But then the story started unraveling. First Sotomayor and Gorsuch put out a statement disputing some aspects of the reporting/narrative.

Then, this afternoon, Chief Justice Roberts went on the record to say the masking story was bogus.

But before that denial, the original NPR story was quickly picked up across Twitter and other outlets. In particular, broadcast outlets gave the story plenty of airtime. Here we have the story recycled by both @CNBC and @MSNBC.

As ever, @MSNBC really led the charge.

On his show list night, @chrislhayes repeated the now-debunked allegations verbatim, talking up how big this story was if it could leak from the air-tight chamber of SCOTUS.

Here’s the transcript: msnbc.com/transcripts/tr…

Lots of their other hosts and talking heads joined in. Here’s @mehdirhasan and @KatiePhang promoting a (now-corrected, at least) tweet from @mjs_DC that got a lot of traction on the erroneous reporting.

And resident disinformation pusher @kylegriffin1 shared the story, too.

And she’s got me blocked but @joyannreid went full conspiracy in this case - suggesting that CJ Roberts orchestrated a fake denial, or something.

But it wasn’t just the broadcast voices. Tons of other outlets repeated this reporting - not confirming it with their own sources, mind you, just parroting the storyline back.

Here’s @USATODAY, @BusinessInsider (also picked up on @Yahoo) and @NYMag.

The list goes on. Here’s @thedailybeast, @Newsweek (cmon, guys) and propaganda outlet @ajplus doing the same thing.

Beyond the outlets themselves, reporters across the corporate press pushed out the story, too.

Here’s just a smattering from @CNN’s @jimsciutto and @edlavaCNN, @politico’s @JonLemire and @NPR’s @davidgura

And then - as always - lefty Twitter blue check/commentary types immediately shared that story out as if it were gospel. That includes:

@jbouie (NYT)
@jemelehill (The Atlantic)
@esglaude (“These people are monsters”)
@donmoyn (“confirmation” he says)

And, naturally, plenty of these folks immediately used this reporting - since refuted - as an opportunity to confirm their priors on Gorsuch, the Supreme Court & anyone who isn’t interested in forever masking. That included: @ElieNYC, @Travon, @clairecmc (sheesh) & @ananavarro

I have pointed this out before but once again: the name of @briantylercohen’s show is “No Lie” which is beginning to feel like some sort of Orwellian bad joke given the amount of misinformation he spreads. @NoLieWithBTC

We also heard from the very-online public health “experts” like @LeahNTorres and @gorskon

Is it any wonder that so many in the public have soured on the guidance of public health experts?

And of course the usual Twitter bad actors jumped into the fray. These folks were led, as ever, by @tribelaw, a few times.

He wasn’t alone there, though. There’s too many to include everyone but you had to figure The Lincoln Project jumped this one, so here’s @stuartpstevens. Plus @aravosis and, bleach my eyes, @GeorgeTakei.

I just hope that @BillKristol and @JVLast can see the irony of pushing disinformation as a result of Covid hysteria under the banner of a piece titled “Don’t Let COVID Bring Out the Worst in You”

I think folks get the picture here but just in case here’s: @margotroosevelt (LA Times), @ReignOfApril (black helicopters stuff), @chrisgeidner (“what we thought was up” is too on-the-nose for this wishcasting) & @sadmonsters (the cutting humor I’d expect from the Colbert team)

Many of these people and outlets, you’ll notice, have a professed concern with misinformation.

And yet here they are acting as conduits if not outright creators of politically motivated disinformation to smear their opponents.

And it bears repeating that these sorts of incidents provide a ton of ammunition for people (including people just acting in bad faith) to attack the media more broadly.

It blows my mind that folks aren’t just a little more careful, considering that.

From Russiagate to Covington Catholic and beyond, we see so many of these stories: they *feel* right to reporters/outlets, and so they get repeated, but then they prove to be false.

And confidence in the media erodes from under the feet of folks who’ll shrug this thing off.

But of course, this is the favored variety of misinformation. We won’t see retractions or apologies or Twitter warnings on this content.

And eventually, the cycle will repeat, and the collective faith in the media will grind down even lower.

Two important takeaways:

1) if a story perfectly confirms your priors, wait until it can be confirmed/authenticated before you spike the football, especially if you have a platform.

2) don’t trust unnamed sources, particularly when they confirm all of said priors.

Also, missed this one, but from @brianstelter and @oliverdarcy’s newsletter, spotted by @redsteeze:

And for those who have asked: I’ve turned on the tip feature on Twitter. These threads are a labor of love but you can throw me beer money (or crypto) on Twitter’s mobile app at this button here: