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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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Biden’s disastrous debate performance brought to a screeching halt a multi-year campaign from the media to present the president as mentally fit.
Do you really remember how hard the press pushed you not to trust your lyin’ eyes on Biden’s decline?
Start here ⤵️
I suspect most of you remember the allegations from the White House that videos showing Biden behaving erratically were “cheap fakes.”
The media rushed to repeat this claim. Look at the extent @nytimes went to say you didn’t see anything and that Biden was fine.
Perhaps the wildest was @washingtonpost, who gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to videos showing Biden displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as fakes, “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype.”
Part of their defense was that Biden “doesn’t dance.”
You remember Russian Collusion. But do you remember the “Russian bounties” allegation, where the press ran with a conspiracy theory to make Trump look like a monster?
With the debate tonight, I think it’s timely to revisit a falsehood Biden pushed. Follow along ⤵️
It started with a scoop from @nytimes that claimed Russia had placed bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, that Trump knew about it, and he did nothing.
Days later, @washingtonpost followed up with the claim that these bounties—again, allegedly ignored by Trump—led to the deaths of American servicemen.
Do you *really* remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? I fear we’ve lost the plot.
With Hunter’s name in the news I wanted to revisit the extent to which the media went to cover up corruption allegations against—and at the behest of—his father.
Follow along. ⤵️
You have to start with the scoop from @nypost and @EmmaJoNYC.
Their lede from October was damning:
“Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”
The story was fundamentally about Joe Biden’s alleged corruption. It was huge news, on the eve of an election.
The press leapt to claim the scoop wasn’t legit. And they reframed the issue: now it was about Hunter, not Joe. Here’s @NPR before/after
Good to see the NYT’s considerable resources being put to finding the truth in a debate between private citizens that led one of them to raise a flag upside down.
Real afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted stuff here.
It has only become “news” because of the pivot to left wing clickbait that Trump inspired among the press.
It’s politically inspired harassment and not only is it noxious it’s driving a deep animus among its target demo that is fraying what remains of the bounds of our body politic and society more broadly.
I’ve got an oldie-but-a-goodie for you from the archive of unhinged media coverage.
Do you remember how insane the coverage of Trump’s killing of Iranian Gen. Soleimani was?
I bet it’s worse than you remember. Follow along ⤵️
It all started with what I’ve gotta say might be the coldest presidential use of social media in history.
After ordering the strike that killed Iranian General Qaseem Soleimani, Trump tweeted out simply a picture of an American flag.
Many in the media went berserk.
First, the issue was directly with what Trump had done. Outlets claimed that he was rushing America into a war. @washingtonpost tried to point out the hypocrisy of a president who had said he would prevent a war.