This Week in Misinformation: Politico-Vaccines, Platforms-Elections, Cassidy-Trump

Sep 29, 2023

What a run; we’ve done this 103 times and counting! Thanks so much for being a reader. Would love to hear what you think of it one of these times.

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.

The misinformation-fueled anti-vaccine movement picks up even more steam.

There’s a whole Politico (42.46) series out on this, including why it’s bothering Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis alike. The situation we’re in is that polio, which was eradicated, is again becoming a concern.
This is, of course, worse with politics. The Hill (42.61) observes that COVID conspiracy theories, in particular, are returning in force just in time for the 2024 election season. It’s mostly Republicans who are persuaded by the misinformation around vaccines (Politico), and the profit machine that feeds on doubt vaccines has made the movement a political force to be reckoned with (Politico).
Unfortunately, our human vulnerability to vaccine misinformation is hurting the non-humans we love, too (Forbes, 40.38). A majority of dog owners, for example, are skeptical that vaccinations are necessary for their pet (CBS News, 41.75).

The platforms are not letting researchers or users do much about all the misinformation.

In a time when understanding online misinformation is more important than ever, TikTok is discouraging researchers from analyzing data about what happens on its platform. Bright spots emerge—an interesting study on measuring vaccine-related online communities’ monetization strategies (via Nature, 46.33) stood out this week—but the overall picture is that we aren’t keeping pace with events. Some of this is intentional: Congressional Republicans have been waging lawfare against misinformation researchers in the name of combatting censorship (Washington Post, 38.44).
On Twitter, Elon Musk has apparently nixed the feature where users could report misleading info (TechCrunch, 46.27)—but only about politics, for some reason. No wonder EU officials say “X” is the Internet’s largest source of disinformation (PBS, 45.14).
Read all of this in the context of how crazy things get around and after elections now; case in point, Fox News’s Jesse Watters is already inceptioning his primetime audience with a theory that intelligence agencies are plotting to steal the 2024 election for Biden (Media Matters, 26.44).

The former White House aide who testified to Congress last year about January 6th is back.

Cassidy Hutchinson has written a book (New York Times, 42.00) that, my impression so far, is basically what she told the January 6th Committee under oath but with several additional claims that are sure to set her former bosses off. Hutchinson was nervous to testify, she wrote (CNN, 42.18), but the example of courage set by Liz Cheney inspired her to speak up (The Hill).
Key among the new revelations was that Donald Trump, President of the United States, chanted “hang” along with the rioters he saw—on his dining room TV—who were out to kill the Vice President of the United States (ABC News, 45.40). She also had a lecherous backstage encounter with Rudy Giuliani before he went on stage at the Ellipse rally (CBS News).
Sundry details of milder interest also emerged, for example the reason Trump refused to wear a mask during the pandemic was that it wrecked his bronzer (Daily Beast, 33.40), and Hutchinson one time found Mike Lindell wandering around the White House with no escort (Insider, 41.29).
Ms. Hutchinson used her media appearances this week to urge Republicans to stand up to Trump (The Independent, 41.74).