Thread by @AGHamilton29

I probably should just ignore it, but this @JVLast post on the alleged "double standard" of conservative media is so bad that it's worthy of dissecting how it repeatedly misleads readers to sell a narrative.

thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/the-conserva…

So it starts with this juxtaposition. He's putting the largest news publications in the country accusing those of simply bringing up the possibility of a lab leak of promoting a debunked conspiracy on the same level as random people claiming it was a bio-weapon (who?)

Next, "over time" is doing a lot of work here & the claim of more pieces is just nonsense. A year and a half later some are retracting something that was obvious in Feb of 2020. And there is more whitewashing going on than self-reflection from much of the press.

The media didn't "self-correct" here. They waited until a Democrat became POTUS and his admin told them the same thing that the previous admin told them to suddenly decide now they can actually consider it as accurate.

Then notice the false generalization about "same people" here. As an example, I'm a major critic of the media on self-leak and of conservative media on election issues etc.

So notice several aspects of this that make it misleading: 1) He is comparing partisan media to allegedly non-partisan media while pretending that left-wing partisan media just doesn't exist so he could emphasize this juxtaposition.

So MSM = no better than partisan media then?

2) He also seemingly intentionally ignores there actually was a lot of diversity in conservative media on those vert topics. FNC's news area reported a lot of hard truths about the election that got their viewers mad at them.

The whole problem is that the MSM overwhelmingly treated lab-leak as debunked conspiracy and then it was banned from consideration and discussion because of it. No one banned discussion on those topics bc someone in conservative media covered them poorly. That's the difference.

The fact is that conservative media is very partisan and often makes mistakes, but it also has diversity and people treat them as if they are partisan. MSM wants the credibility of being non-partisan and to set narratives accordingly while behaving like complete partisans.

P.S.

He didn't really get into specifics on the topics he claims conservative media got wrong, but the HCQ story was bad for both. It ended up less effective than other treatments, but other countries were using it early on & MSM rushed 2 dismiss it as much as right promoted it.