Tag: fake news

Another Hysterical Ivermectin Claim Bites the Dust and Garners an Incredible Correction

I guess we are going to keep doing this.

The media’s behavior when it comes to even possible COVID therapeutics has just been abhorrent. In the case of hydroxychloroquine, the nation endured over a year of hysteria claiming the drug was dangerous (including a now-debunked, scam study and a rant by Fox News’ Neil Cavuto). In the end, though, hydroxychloroquine was shown to have an effect when used early in infection. How many thousands of people died because patients and doctors were pushed into using an FDA-approved, safe drug that was in large supply?

Were any lessons learned from that ridiculous ordeal? Of course not, because now there’s ivermectin. The media have spent the last several weeks claiming the FDA-approved drug for human use is “horse dewormer” while trashing Joe Rogan for taking it as part of a COVID treatment plan.

Yesterday, I wrote on a viral claim involving ivermectin, spread by blue checkmarks across the left, that asserted an Oklahoma hospital was so overwhelmed with overdoses from the animal variant that they were turning away gun-shot victims. That turned out to be so false that the hospital changed its internet homepage with a correction of the disinformation, noting that they did not have a single patient admitted currently that had overdosed on ivermectin.

But as I said when I opened this article, we are apparently going to keep doing this. Another ivermectin hoax has now been exposed, this time over a widely spread claim that Mississippi’s poison control was deluged with ivermectin overdoses representing 70% of total calls.

As a setup, here’s proof that the media went nuts with this, see here, here, here, here, and here.

Here’s the full correction per the Associated Press which was pushed out to SF Gate.

In an article published Aug. 23, 2021, about people taking livestock medicine to try to treat coronavirus, The Associated Press erroneously reported based on information provided by the Mississippi Department of Health that 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center were from people who had ingested ivermectin to try to treat COVID-19. State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said Wednesday the number of calls to poison control about ivermectin was about 2%. He said of the calls that were about ivermectin, 70% were by people who had ingested the veterinary version of the medicine.

So instead of it being 70% of calls being about ivermectin, the actual number was…2%. And of that 2%, 70% of those calls were about the animal variant. In other words, instead of talking about possibly hundreds or thousands of animal variant ivermectin overdose calls, the number is actually infinitesimal, representing only 1.4% of calls.

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Fake News: The strange campaign against ivermectin escalates

What’s with the bizarre campaign against ivermectin?

It’s not just that the FDA has put out a quackish tweet (shown here by AT contributor Dr. Brian Joondeph, M.D.) scolding viewers that they are not horses or cows. That’s in reference to the fact that in some high-dose forms, ivermectin is used as a horse dewormer, begging the question about its effectiveness when it is dosed and formulated properly as a human medical treatment for COVID, prescribed off-label. The news reports repeatedly call ivermectin a dangerous drug, implying that all uses of the drug are dangerous, even when taken properly.

It’s now a lot of nonsense about mass injuries from people who take the horse dewormer form of the drug on their own to beat COVID, as if there is anyone out there advocating such an improper use of the medicine.

Here are a few of the screaming headlines from multiple news outlets:

Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says -Rolling Stone

Gunshot victims left to wait as Oklahoma hospitals overwhelmed with horse dewormer overdoses, doctor says -Fox59 

(Funny that similarity, almost like the same guy wrote those headlines?)

Overdoses from anti-parasite drug ivermectin overwhelm rural Oklahoma hospitals – leaving gunshot victims waiting for emergency rooms -Daily Mail

Doctor says gunshot victims forced to wait for treatment as Oklahoma hospitals fill up with people overdosing from ivermectin -Independent

One problem: The story is fake.

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Rolling Stone Issues ‘Update’ After Horse Dewormer Hit-Piece Debunked

After Joe Rogan announced that he’d kicked Covid in just a few days using a cocktail of drugs, including Ivermectin – an anti-parasitic prescribed for humans for over 35 years, with over 4 billion doses administered (and most recently as a Covid-19 treatment), the left quickly started mocking Rogan for having taken a ‘horse dewormer’ due to its dual use in livestock.

Rolling Stone’s Jon Blistein led the charge.

On Friday, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Wade took another stab – publishing a hit piece claiming that Oklahoma ERs were overflowing with people ‘overdosing on horse dewormer.’

It was suspect from the beginning.

The report, sourced to local Oaklahoma outlet KFOR‘s Katelyn Ogle, cites Oklahoma ER doctor Dr. Jason McElyea – who claimed 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.

As people take the drug, McElyea said patients have arrived at hospitals with negative reactions like nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, and cramping — or even loss of sight.“The scariest one that I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss,” the doctor said. -Rolling Stone

Except, the article provided zero evidence for McElyea’s claims, causing people to start asking questions.

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Reuters Study: America Has the Least Trusted Media In The World

A Reuters study has found that nowhere is the media less trusted than in America where fewer than one in three people have any form of trust in the institution.

The survey, which was conducted in 46 nations across the globe, reveals that a total of 44% of U.S. citizens do not have any trust in the media to report the truth.

Of that 44%, 23% ‘strongly disagree’ that they trust the media, while only 29% expressed trust.

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A Court Ruled Rachel Maddow’s Viewers Know She Offers Exaggeration and Opinion, Not Facts

MSNBC’s top-rated host Rachel Maddow devoted a segment in 2019 to accusing the right-wing cable outlet One America News (OAN) of being a paid propaganda outlet for the Kremlin. Discussing a Daily Beast article which noted that one OAN reporter was a “Russian national” who was simultaneously writing copy for the Russian-owned outlet Sputnik on a freelance contract, Maddow escalated the allegation greatly into a broad claim about OAN’s real identity and purpose: “in this case,” she announced, “the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

In response, OAN sued Maddow, MSNBC, and its parent corporation Comcast, Inc. for defamation, alleging that it was demonstrably false that the network, in Maddow’s words, “literally is paid Russian propaganda.” In an oddly overlooked ruling, an Obama-appointed federal judge, Cynthia Bashant, dismissed the lawsuit on the ground that even Maddow’s own audience understands that her show consists of exaggeration, hyperbole, and pure opinion, and therefore would not assume that such outlandish accusations are factually true even when she uses the language of certainty and truth when presenting them (“literally is paid Russian propaganda”).

In concluding that Maddow’s statement would be understood even by her own viewers as non-factual, the judge emphasized that what Maddow does in general is not present news but rather hyperbole and exploitation of actual news to serve her liberal activism:

On one hand, a viewer who watches news channels tunes in for facts and the goings-on of the world. MSNBC indeed produces news, but this point must be juxtaposed with the fact that Maddow made the allegedly defamatory statement on her own talk show news segment where she is invited and encouraged to share her opinions with her viewers. Maddow does not keep her political views a secret, and therefore, audiences could expect her to use subjective language that comports with her political opinions.

Thus, Maddow’s show is different than a typical news segment where anchors inform viewers about the daily news. The point of Maddow’s show is for her to provide the news but also to offer her opinions as to that news. Therefore, the Court finds that the medium of the alleged defamatory statement makes it more likely that a reasonable viewer would not conclude that the contested statement implies an assertion of objective fact.

The judge’s observations about the specific segment at issue — in which Maddow accused a competitor of being “literally paid Russian propaganda” — was even more damning. Maddow’s own viewers, ruled the court, not only expect but desire that she will not provide the news in factual form but will exaggerate and even distort reality in order to shape her opinion-driven analysis (emphasis added):

Viewers expect her to do so, as it is indeed her show, and viewers watch the segment with the understanding that it will contain Maddow’s “personal and subjective views” about the news. See id. Thus, the Court finds that as a part of the totality of the circumstances, the broad context weighs in favor of a finding that the alleged defamatory statement is Maddow’s opinion and exaggeration of the Daily Beast article, and that reasonable viewers would not take the statement as factual. . . .

Here, Maddow had inserted her own colorful commentary into and throughout the segment, laughing, expressing her dismay (i.e., saying “I mean, what?”) and calling the segment a “sparkly story” and one we must “take in stride.” For her to exaggerate the facts and call OAN Russian propaganda was consistent with her tone up to that point, and the Court finds a reasonable viewer would not take the statement as factual given this context. The context of Maddow’s statement shows reasonable viewers would consider the contested statement to be her opinion. A reasonable viewer would not actually think OAN is paid Russian propaganda, instead, he or she would follow the facts of the Daily Beast article; that OAN and Sputnik share a reporter and both pay this reporter to write articles. Anything beyond this is Maddow’s opinion or her exaggeration of the facts.

In sum, ruled the court, Rachel Maddow is among those “speakers whose statements cannot reasonably be interpreted as allegations of fact.” Despite Maddow’s use of the word “literally” to accuse OAN of being a “paid Russian propaganda” outlet, the court dismissed the lawsuit on the ground that, given Maddow’s conduct and her audience’s awareness of who she is and what she does, “the Court finds that the contested statement is an opinion that cannot serve as the basis for a defamation claim.”

What makes this particularly notable and ironic is that a similar argument was made a year later by lawyers for Fox News when defending a segment that appeared on the program of its highest-rated program, Tucker Carlson Tonight. That was part of a lawsuit brought by the former model Karen McDougal, who claimed Carlson slandered her by saying she “extorted” former President Trump by demanding payments in exchange for her silence about an extramarital affair she claimed to have with him.

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What If The Mainstream Media Had Told The Truth?

What If the Media Had Told the Truth? Five MSM Lies for Which Trump Has Been Vindicated, and the Damage They Caused

Remember that time when the mainstream media lied about former President Donald J. Trump, only to have Trump proven correct afterwards?

“Can you be more specific,” you ask?

Good point.

There are so many to mention, we need to be more precise, so let’s narrow the list down to five, and let’s consider the true impact of their dishonesty.

While the media may have been successful in sustaining political damage against Trump, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement – which was their ultimate goal, no doubt – they also caused significant collateral damage, either unwittingly or uncaringly.

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Wikipedia’s Quiet, Big-Tech-Funded Grip On Internet Knowledge Gives It Too Much Power

Wikipedia’s quiet dominance over internet knowledge and close ties to authoritarian big tech companies is giving the online encyclopedia site too much unchecked power.

In one recent example, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is under federal and state investigation for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and growing list of scandals, is described on his Wikipedia page in a positive light while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential election, is painted as a partisan hack who ignored the science.

Anyone who searches for information about both of these governors’ pandemic responses will be given this information that isn’t necessarily true, and Wikipedia doesn’t seem to do anything about it. As a matter of fact, any user who wanted to manipulate a page to fit his agenda could as long as it slipped through Wikipedia’s editing process. That happened seven years ago when a Wikipedia user overlooked The Federalist’s long list of “featured-in” publications and important interviews to try to delete our publication’s entry because, according to the user, it “does not pass the threshold for notability.”

Wikipedia’s move to the left, especially when echoing narratives found in corporate media, is not a sudden one. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is just one of the many people who recently called attention to Wikipedia slowly but surely kissing its neutrality goodbye. In an interview in February, Sanger said the 20-year-old website’s shift towards the left is “disheartening” and “troubling.”

“Wikipedia’s ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work,” Sanger said.

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