This Week in Misinformation: KBJ Hearings, Doubt-Free Thomases, Hunter Enters the 'Biolabs' Chat, Mo Brooks Spurns Trump
24 March 2022
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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 three stories.
At the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republican senators tried out false attack lines about her record to see what might stick.
Opposed as they are to Biden’s appointment of KBJ, as she’s been called, several Republicans made insinuations that were less than honest about her career as a judge (Associated Press, 48.82). Josh Hawley, for example, falsely claimed that she always handed down lesser sentences to people convicted of child pornography than prosecutors requested (@mjs_DC via Twitter).
These assertions about Judge Jackson are misleading (New York Times, 44.35). For those who want to be extra sure about what her record is, ABC News (46.80), FactCheck.org (-), and others have helpfully fact-checked it for us!
There isn’t much left of the confirmation hearings, but one remaining witness who is likely to stir controversy is the CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, a group that has fund-raised on child sex trafficking and conducted vigilante raids to around the world (Daily Dot, 37.32). The group, and this CEO, have a history of dishonesty when it comes to its activities and how effective they are at addressing the real-world problem of trafficking (@_megconley via Twitter).
Ginni Thomas, the wife of conservative justice Clarence Thomas, was reported to have been neck deep in outlandish election conspiracy theories as early as November 2020.
In text messages she sent to Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after Trump lost the election, Ginni Thomas urged the President’s team to do all it could to keep him in office (Washington Post, 41.84). Among the reasons given for why this should be done, she fired off multiple messages containing claims that Democrats had stolen the election (New York Times, 44.35). There was no evidence for this at the time, and the notion has been completely debunked since.
Some of her claims, in fact, lifted language directly from the conspiracy theory fever swamps including QAnon (Rolling Stone, 38.77). Asking Meadows to coordinate with Sidney Powell and “Release the Kraken” to save America, for example. (CNN, 42.82)
It should be remembered, in this regard, that Justice Clarence Thomas was alone, when the matter came before the Court, in denying the January 6th Committee’s request to be given these text messages and other White House records pertinent to the Capitol attack (NBC News, 45.77). He was outvoted 8-1, but it’s not good that he tried.
The Ukrainian “biolabs” information got a Hunter garnish.
A “link” between Hunter Biden and the biolabs was reported by Russian media, and then was blasted out by Tucker Carlson (21.77) to his very, very large audience (@oneunderscore__ via Twitter). We won’t belabor this with a third consecutive week of fact-checking the original nonsense about “bioweapons” labs, but sufficient to say that adding Hunter to the mix does not make any of the rest of it more (or at all) true.
In The New York Times (44.35) misinformation beat reporters laid out a broader picture of how the right wing of American politics, embodied by Tucker but not unique to him, ended up having the same views on, and saying the same things about, Ukraine as Russia. To take one small example, Russia’s foreign minister this week heaped praise on Fox News (35.35) for its willingness to see things Russia’s way (Daily Beast, 35.85). Not a great look, Fox News.
The torrent of other fake stuff about Ukraine meanwhile soldiered on: swastikas painted around Ukraine were actually commissioned by Russian oligarchs (Rolling Stone, 38.77); everyone in Europe somehow got the idea that Ukraine might agree to never join NATO in exchange for peace (BBC Monitoring, -); a Russian news website published a refreshingly candid figure of Russian army deaths in Ukraine, only to quickly delete the claim and blame Ukrainian hackers for posting it in the first place (Reuters, 48.04).
Grab bag: Zelenskyy decrees all TV channels shall be one; a look at 'Nocoiners'; Alex Jones fails to show up for deposition; MTG actually didn’t refuse to applaud for Zelenskyy; fact-checkers in 70 countries are working on Russia-Ukraine; Russia makes a fake Instagram called Rossgram; that Wayfair baloney in 2020 hurt kids who needed real help; things are looking not great for the QAnon splinter cult in Dallas; and Mo Brooks bares soul about Trump illegally asking him, pretty recently still, to "rescind" the 2020 election--to which Trump rejoined, "NO ENDORSEMENT FOR YOU."
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin