And we wonder why most of us don’t trust the mainstream media? Journalism 101: Verify your sources. I don’t even have a Journalism degree but know that simple rule. But no – an irresponsible news channel in Oklahoma ran with a story from a single source that turned out to be false… but the cascading effects of major TV personalities and opinion hosts, as usual, let this whole false story spin out of control.
And a brief note before continuing: The people I watch these days say up front whether something isn’t fully confirmed; and when they do report something as fact (and it’s a topic I want to further explore), I go and spent time researching on my own to validate further. Gee. Journalism 101. And I still don’t have that degree.
The anatomy of a hoax:
At the beginning of September, KFOR, an Oklahoma NBC affiliate owned by Nexstar, ran a story based on statements made by an ER Doc, Jason McElyea, that hospitals were being overrun with Ivermectin overdoses (a horse de-wormer) as people thought it was a treatment for covid. It was so bad that critical patients, like gunshot victims, were sitting in ambulances outside unable to get in.
A VERY few days later, Rolling Stone picked up the story and ran with it. From there, Rachel Maddow, host of her namesake show on MSNBC, tweeted that story out to her over 1 million followers. At the same time Joy Reid, host of the “ReidOut” also on MSNBC, ran it live on her show.
Then … as if that wasn’t bad enough … the AP wire ran a story about Mississippi poison control being overrun with Ivermectin OD calls (70% of their calls were reported as such). And the cascade went on from there.
Nobody verified it. They were all too anxious to paint rural Oklahomans as hillbilly right-winger nut cases (my opinion). And it was all a lie.
The hospital came out and said the entire claim made by the doctor was completely false, and they are seeing virtually no ivermectin overdoses and no patients were delayed or denied care. Oh – and they also reported that the doctor quoted hasn’t worked there for months. OOPS.
And the Mississippi poison folks – they came out and immediately disclosed that on 2%, not 70%, of their call traffic was ivermectin-related. So, the AP was only off by a factor of … 35x. OOPS.
The unfortunate part is that this is really just the latest in a string of false narratives I have seen from these people. I ranked CNN at the top of mis-information (volumes of data on the Russian collusion reporting, among other, that I can reproduce there), but these two hosts on MSNBC are quickly rising to the top individually. And the real irony: Guess who is one of the biggest emerging democrat critics these days? Bill Maher. Wow.
