This Week in Misinformation: Why Trump Didn't March on the Capitol, How Much Musk Loves Free Speech, Whether Vaccines Contain Satan's DNA
14 April 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.
We did a fun thing this week, hosting expert fact-checkers in an audio chat on Twitter to talk about a range of issues in the business of debunking! Check it out.
Now, on to our top stories.
It’s been a while since we had a week with this much news about Trump, the attack on the Capitol, and his pledge to march down Pennsylvania Avenue on January 6th.
Donald Trump spoke about his failure to instruct the mob to stand down when he knew they were breaking into the Capitol to disrupt Congressional proceedings with his blessing (Washington Post, 42.87), and his only regret seems to be that he didn’t go with the unruly crowd (CNN, 42.73). Liz Cheney clarified what she claimed was misreporting by The New York Times (44.31) about the January 6th Committee, saying it has plenty of evidence to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal offenses (Forbes, 43.59).
One such rioter, who says he fell down a ‘rabbit hole’ of election lies (New York Times, 44.31) tried to argue in court that Trump had “authorized” the assault (NBC News, 45.78). After the prosecution argued Trump should be tried in his own right if he committed crimes that day (Politico, 42.77), the jury found the defendant guilty anyway (Washington Post, 42.87).
Trump’s oldest son was reported by CNN (42.73) to have texted his White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after the election with messages decidedly unhelpful for exonerating the former president in all of this; legal experts analyzing them (Newsweek, 38.36) say they show that a coup was basically the plan from before the votes were even counted (New York Times, 44.31). And, not for nothing, Meadows this week was found to have done a little voter fraud of his own (New York Post, 32.65).
Billionaire and smokables aficionado Elon Musk put in an offer to purchase 100% of Twitter, with major implications for misinformation and other forms of free expression.
The richest man in the world will not join Twitter’s board after all (New York Times, 44.31) and instead offered to buy Twitter for $41 billion (CNN, 42.73). Musk framed his offer as defending free speech (Yahoo! News, 42.66) calling it “a social imperative for a functioning democracy” and that he will unlock Twitter’s “extraordinary potential.” Experts quickly pointed out that extremely free speech-oriented platforms have tended toward general terribleness (@coolfacejane via Twitter), so we’ll see how far Mr. Musk is really willing to take this if he succeeds in making Twitter private.
The unsolicited, apparently hostile, offer from Musk overshadows earlier high stakes drama (New York Times, 44.31) over board member ownership limits and rising fears Musk is trying to take over the company. Reactions ran the gamut from QAnon influencer theories of merging Twitter with Truth Social (@pokerpolitics via Twitter) and that Musk will reinstate all suspended accounts (@2022_Karma via Twitter).
Much remains to be sorted out, including regulatory issues surrounding Musk's disclosures and investors’ skepticism--reflected in the short-lived rise in the Twitter’s stock price to a level not even close to the $52 per share he was proffering (New York Times, 44.31).
Sad there’s just two top stories? Well get ready, because the grab bag is as fun as ever: Russia really tries to say Ukraine bombed its own train station; TikTok and Facebook are still terrible about Russia’s invasion--though not as terrible as China; conspiracy theorists do their racist, rumor-mongering thing after the Brooklyn shooting; a chiropractor explains how the vaccine contains “Satan's DNA” in a new Stew Peters film; a VICE (41.65) reporter goes undercover with COVID conspiracists who think they can make themselves police officers; Taylor Lorenz writes about "algospeak," "nip nops," and "le dollar bean," whatever that means; indicted election denier Tina Peters is poised to be the Republican nominee for Colorado Secretary of State; Marjorie Taylor Greene fails to get a judge to dismiss a January 6th-related legal challenge that could prevent her from running; and Rolling Stone (38.77) shows us how January 6th defendants raised more than $3.5 million through GiveSendGo.
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin