We know the legacy media are fake news, but there are some stories that are so fake that the ol’ Bullshit Meter goes into overdrive at first sight. One such story was widely reported yesterday:
“Donald Trump ‘offered German company funds to develop vaccine for sole US use’” screamed the headline in the Australian. The Oz’s readers were mostly sceptical: “Sounds like a load of frankfurters and dumplings to me” was a typical reader comment. The story smelled worse than an overfed koi carp.
As it turns out, readers were right to smell BS.
A report from a German newspaper claiming that President Donald Trump wanted to secure exclusive American access to a coronavirus vaccine has proven to be false, but only after the story was repeated and spread by mainstream media outlets including Reuters, The Guardian, and Business Insider.
Reuters later stealth-edited its story to incorporate official statements denying the original newspaper report.
Too late: the legacy media were already out the gate with their latest “Orange Man Bad!” headline.
The German newspaper Welt am Sonntag[…]cited an anonymous source in the German government claiming to “confirm” that President Trump wanted the vaccine “only for the United States,” then covered reactions from German politicians, who declared “no country should have a monopoly on any future vaccine,” according to the summary from reporters Paul Carrel and Andreas Rinke.
But the story quickly fell apart. CureVac issued a statement on Twitter denying that it received an offer from the U.S. government. “CureVac rejects all allegations from press,” the firm said.
Richard Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, also denied the story, saying that the original Welt story “was wrong.”
But, of course, the legacy media went out of their way to admit to their mistake, surely?
The revised Reuters story contains no editorial indications that it was corrected or updated, which is standard journalistic practice[…]
The Guardian‘s story still claims that President Trump wants the vaccine for “exclusive U.S. access.” Other outlets that spread the debunked story include Business Insider, NBC News, and Mother Jones.
MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin also spread the Business Insider article to his more than 693,000 Twitter followers.
The legacy media will spread a lie around the world and shoot the truth while it’s still looking for its right sock.
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