The media are up in arms about Elon Musk's reinstatement of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's account on X, formerly Twitter, over the weekend. News outlets warn the move will increase online misinformation, with NBC News calling it Musk's "latest push to amplify and restore conspiratorial, far-right figures to the platform."
But if the media are serious about reducing the spread of false conspiracy theories on social media, maybe they should deactivate their accounts.
These are outlets, after all, that spent years breathlessly promoting ridiculous, and later debunked, stories about how President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election.
The first 3 paragraphs from the @CJR review of the press's extreme mishandling of Russiagate, by Jeff Gerth, Pulitzer winner for NYT, now retired.
In sum, the press was shocked Mueller found "no evidence" to support their core conspiracy theory, but did no self-examination: pic.twitter.com/bfdjvqcMk5
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 31, 2023
@chrislhayes, who suggested that the previous president might be a Manchurian candidate put there by Putin, would like you all to stop believing conspiracies about elections now. pic.twitter.com/8659Oxbgel
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) June 30, 2021
Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe says he thinks "it's possible" President Trump could be a Russian asset.
"I think that's why we started our investigation and I'm really anxious to see where Director Mueller concludes that." https://t.co/9ZPbdzUHqC pic.twitter.com/R5cEpOIKL7
— CNN (@CNN) February 20, 2019
Analysis: The three possible explanations for Trump’s interactions with Russia https://t.co/6bXWRPeFIq
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 14, 2019
'Once again we see a president who appears to be acting impulsively and erratically — except when it comes to Russia.... Here, Trump has been eerily consistent in his willingness to adopt policies that enable Russia’s strategy while undermining ours." https://t.co/yhpHIPABQH
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) December 21, 2018
What if Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987? @JonathanChait reports. https://t.co/IQknIwGoV3
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) July 9, 2018
The media went on to spend years dismissing evidence that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab as "unfounded conspiracy theories" or "debunked Covid-19 myths"—until the U.S. government endorsed the idea.
One of the worst in the light of hindsight was this @AP piece from Dec 2020, 'Debunked COVID-19 myths survive online, despite facts"
One of those 'debunked myths" that fact-checkers had struggled mightily to quash was the idea that the virus could’ve leaked from a lab. pic.twitter.com/PK0DJxo4vU
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2023
WHO team in Wuhan dismisses lab leak theory, continues hunt for intermediary coronavirus host https://t.co/YsWqmzoh49
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 9, 2021
A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China.
There is zero evidence for this. Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.https://t.co/GDTo2geUng
— NPR (@NPR) December 31, 2020
'We urge the US to stop spreading disinformation."
China says recent accusations by the Trump administration that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in a lab in Wuhan are a political strategy for Republicans ahead of the 2020 presidential election. https://t.co/noJa7g8n9f
— CNN (@CNN) May 6, 2020
Around the same time, outlets baselessly wrote off Hunter Biden's laptop full of incriminating files as "Russian disinformation," thereby allowing Joe Biden to do the same as he campaigned for the presidency in 2020.
McFaul: Hunter Biden story "an obvious Russian plot"
These threads are very useful reminders as to which people should clearly not be cited as experts or trusted on such stories. https://t.co/NpHYELZ16f
— AG (@AGHamilton29) December 11, 2020
Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week's newsletter➡️ https://t.co/CJesPgmGvo pic.twitter.com/jAi7PnpbZf
— NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials believe the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden 'has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" https://t.co/T58QhdXEJd
— POLITICO (@politico) October 20, 2020
'To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work," former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says as authorities are investigating if recently published emails are tied to a Russian disinformation effort targeting Biden. https://t.co/shyMNnJ7Yr pic.twitter.com/GFSeIWXeY4
— CNN (@CNN) October 17, 2020
As of this week, the corruption documented on Hunter Biden's laptop is at the center of two criminal indictments of the first son and an impeachment inquiry into his father.
So, before the media freak out about Musk's promotion of conspiracy theories, they might want to stop doing so themselves.
https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1714778669481124341