This Week in Misinformation: Hello/Goodbye COVID, Paul Pelosi Tape, Twitter Fails 15
2 February 2023
This Prism newsletter strives to be the paper of record for all that’s happening in misinformation in the United States. For any citizen whose life is impacted by misinformation, it helps you see how storylines evolve from multiple, sourced angles on important stories in one place. For amateur and professional misinformation watchers, it is your go-to resource for updates on peers, platforms, propagandists, and politicians. Learn more about Prism and our other products on our Substack page, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook!
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Reliability scores for media outlets cited in the summary are in parentheses for each, courtesy of the terrific folks at Ad Fontes Media.
Now, on to our top stories.
It’s the beginning of the end for COVID, and the misinformation that goes with it?
Republicans in the House of Representatives have declared the pandemic to be over (New York Times, 42.49), so that’s great news. Less good is that in reality COVID is still very much with us (CNN, 42.45), but okay.
Meanwhile, the anti-vaccine camp had a (football) field day when NFL’s Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest (NBC News, 45.28) and their knee-jerk blaming of “the jab” went viral. Hamlin was out of the public eye for a while, prompting the would-be truthers to demand proof of life.
He then reemerged, posting videos of himself talking about his health episode and his new initiative to help people with heart problems (via Twitter)--but people who were sure he was dead and Pfizer was covering it all up posited that the video was deceptive (@RVAwonk via Twitter) or faked (@billdmccarthy via Twitter). There is no indication that Damar Hamlin is dead, or that vaccines had anything to do with his televised collapse.
The police body cam footage from the night Paul Pelosi was attacked finally came out, but the baseless innuendo continued apace.
Conservative commentators and more than a few office-holding Republicans (@AdamKinzinger via Twitter) made light of the savage home invasion and attack and insisted that there was more to the story that the video would tell. But when it was released and 100 percent backed up the mainstream version of the story (Politico, 42.89), somehow this failed to change the minds of those determined to see something else (@peltzmadeline via Twitter).
Elon Musk, to his credit, apologized for sharing a sketchy, conspiratorial Santa Monica Observer (15.09) piece about the attack just after it happened, which he deleted pretty quickly when tons of people called him out on it anyway. TBD how this will play with Musk’s new right-wing fan club, who are in thrall to the narrative implied by the “just asking questions” article he posted.
And, lest this get lost in the rest of the noise: the Pelosi assailant is clearly convicted of a range of unsubstantiated beliefs about Democrats committing crimes against Donald Trump (CNN, 42.45), and his only regret as of the video’s release is that he didn’t have more victims (Fox News, 36.20).
The Twitter Files fails to deliver the goods, 15 times in a row.
By now the pattern is familiar: one of Elon Musk’s chosen reporters cherry-pick some stuff out of the company’s archives and weave it together to spin a tale that--amazingly--matches their priors about the evils of government censorship and “media” malfeasance. This week, it was Matt Taibbi versus something called the Hamilton 68 project (via Twitter), which tracked Twitter activity related to Russian influence operations in the U.S. until it was replaced by Hamilton 2.0 in 2018.
Taibbi’s primary evidence (see the Prism summary here) is that Yoel Roth, at the time a Twitter executive responsible for trust and safety, thought Hamilton’s methodology was bad and that its output was being used dishonestly by the media. Fair points! But while this reflects mostly just Roth’s view and implicates the media far more than Hamilton 68 itself, Taibbi (and Musk) spilled a lot of ink about what a fraud the dashboard was and how corrupt the people behind it must be.
Those people, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) corrected the record distorted by Twitter Files 15 with a detailed fact sheet refuting basically all of the insinuations, which as you can probably guess Taibbi and Musk declined to take seriously (via Twitter). The problem for them, though, is that Taibbi has been pretty openly pro-Russia and extremely dishonest in his handling of previous Twitter Files, so his credibility is shredded. The ASD experts who built and operated Hamilton have a track record of opposing Russia and aren’t known to be liars. FWIW, ASD’s version of how Hanilton went is consistent with my own experience working to counter Russian influence operations!
Something good awaits us all in the many-splendored grab bag: ChatGPT is good at misinformation that is hard to detect; the FBI agent indicted for ties to foreign powers is not the one leading the Russia investigation into Trump; Elon Musk falls for not one, but two fake Ukraine things and misrepresents his meeting with Congressional leaders; Republican senators and the Speaker of the House are shocked, shocked I tell you that DirecTV is dropping Newsmax; Truth Social is a hotbed of miracle cures, scams, and fake merchandise; Trump is delving still deeper on QAnon and other extreme stuff; mini-Trump Kari Lake loses but doesn't concede and takes in millions from supporters while other Arizona Republicans who lost also dug in on supposed election fraud; and Mike Lindell spends a fortune to join the ranks of the election losers with whom he has become so strongly associated.
All that, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin