It’s not for nothing that my Third Law of the Media is: “Always assume that ‘fact-checkers’ are trying to bullshit you”. At least robot overlord Zuckerberg admits that his “fact-checkers” are just, like, his opinion, man. The mainstream media would still have us believe that they’re hard-headed truth-seekers, no matter how often they prove otherwise beyond reasonable doubt.
One of the more egregious recent examples is the “debunking” of the Anthony Fauci beagle-torture “myth” because the story is very much true. Fauci’s bureaucratic fiefdom, NIAID, absolutely funded “research” that involved torturing beagle puppies. The reptilian Fauci, who makes even Zuckerberg and Hillary Clinton look human by contrast, most certainly knew about it and approved it.
Last summer, a conservative outfit called White Coat Waste (WCW) launched a campaign to expose various beagle-torturing “science” experiments funded all or in part by Fauci’s NIAID. WCW is, of course, a partisan org, but their info seemed solid. And that created a problem for Fauci, because animal torture plays very badly among leftists.
Enter the “fact-checkers”.
On Nov. 19, The Washington Post ran a 3,650-word “debunking” of the beagle story. The two authors, Pulitzer-winning Beth Reinhard and millennial newcomer Yasmeen Abutaleb, began by painting Fauci as the victim of “hate” and “death threats” as the result of a “misleading” campaign.
Regarding the Fauci/NIAID beagle-torturing claims, Reinhard and Abutaleb (and the people they interviewed for the piece) dismissed them as “false,” “misinformation,” “bogus,” “conspiracy theories,” “ridiculous accusations and outright lies,” “dangerous to the entire field of science,” and “erroneous claims amplified by a right-wing echo chamber.” “Falsified misinformation” from “inflammatory right-wing media outlets and influencers” created “outrage that was supercharged” by “Republican operatives.”
Except…
Even the WaPo’s article admitted, deep in the fine print, that five of the six puppy-torture studies cited by WCW were funded by Fauci’s institute. The sixth initially said (in their published paper) they were, but later corrected the record — nearly six months after WCW published their report.
On that pathetic, pettifogging basis alone was built the WaPo’s entire “debunking”. The story was 85% correct, but the lyin’ mainstream media called it “bogus” and “ridiculous”.
The ludicrously named Politifact, chronic liars that they are, also ran with the “debunking”. When challenged to defend what was clearly a fake “fact-check”, their management responded that, “the main problem is the highly charged language they used”.
Because, when a top bureaucrat is okaying “research” that involves poisoning puppies after cutting their vocal cords to make sure the animals’ agonised howls didn’t deafen the labcoated torturers, heaven forbid that anyone should use strong language about it.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, claimed that Fauci personally snipped the vocal cords of dogs (a more honest piece by Factcheck.org admitted that Fauci personally approves of all NIAID-funded projects, meaning that the only way to say he’s not responsible for the torture is to use an impossible standard by which Steve Jobs would not be responsible for the iPhone because he didn’t personally build each one).
Takimag
I repeat: Always assume that ‘fact-checkers’ are trying to bullshit you. Because it’s nearly always true.