Early last week,
a curious flurry of verified accounts shared a story from Salon.com reporting that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis required universities to have faculty and students report their political views to the state. Not only was this an old story from June 2021, but it was completely debunked over a year ago. Yet, many journalists were pushing this verifiably false claim about a politician, and no one in the press was heard squealing about this disinformation being a threat to our democracy.
Then currently, we see a severe dose of media malpractice, one that actually crosses over to both medical and democracy-challenging levels. Countless outlets are spreading a story about a 10-year-old girl who has been forced to travel in order to get an abortion. It has become a global news story, thanks mostly to President Biden sharing this tale. Except, as I covered at RedState, there is
a distinct possibility this is a fabricated news item.
No one has been able to verify this story beyond the lone source, an abortion doctor in Indiana. No authorities or politicians can verify this case, and those involved with reporting on it have not shared anything that could be regarded as proof this girl exists. Yet it has been spread like wildfire across the media industry. Brian Stelter
once lectured on this very behavior in the press, condemning those who might be "
repeating, not reporting."
Of course, he was using that glib line directed at Fox News and conservative outlets. Yet, here we see the media industry engaged in that exact behavior on a massive scale. He is muted on that story, the practice in general, and the misinformation campaign writ large. There is a good (bad) reason for this. The press wants to be the authority on what is considered misinformation. Stelter even alludes to the fluid nature of this topic, exposing the convenience of the interpretational aspects.
"The discouraging truth about disinformation – It's that the topic itself is almost impossible to talk about since there is next to no agreement on what the term even means."
Somehow, despite being unclear what
disinformation means, the press has supreme confidence in who is guilty of this nebulous subject and lashes out freely. They encourage the government to go after those engaged in this ill-defined practice, as they are the ones pointing at the guilty parties. Meanwhile, they are free to push false stories and narratives, confident that since they are the thought police, they will never face the charge themselves.