Thread

Today we saw the birth & death of a coronavirus news cycle suggesting - contrary to common sense - that the Biden Admin had to “start from scratch” on a vaccine rollout since the Trump Admin had done nothing.

Curious who bought the spin? I’ve got some thoughts

@mj_lee broke the story today for @CNN, who has shared it countless times and mentioned it dozens of times on air, citing (you guessed it!) unnamed sources.

Only problem is, Dr. Fauci shot down the claim today at today’s press conference.

Seems he’s got a reason to know.

Of course, before the story was rejected outright by the most believable person involved in all this, lots of @CNN’s main voices jumped in about how big of a deal it was. This is what we call expectation setting.

Here we’ve got:
@CNNSotu
@AnaCabrera
@jimsciutto and
@cnnross

But it wasn’t just @CNN. Other outlets and their reporters piled on, too. Because you see, if people believe this, Biden’s job gets way easier: anything tied to the vaccine is a success.

It wouldn’t be a chance for anti-Trump spin if @maddow and @MaddowBlog weren’t involved.

She wasn’t even alone in her own program. Here we’ve got @kylegriffin1 doing the same thing.

Again, the Biden WH has every incentive for you to believe this. It means that any future failures are on Trump, not Biden.

The problem with these types of stories is that you can’t unring a bell. Once the story is out there it’s going to find its way into the bloodstream, and even if it gets corrected or retracted after the fact, the damage will already be done. See @dailykos, @futurism.

And that’s even considering that some of these outlets are even trying to act in good faith.

I have long since ceased to believe that @joshtpm and @TPM are acting in good faith. Same for @RawStory.

And it wasn’t just reporters. Here we’ve got @SpeakerPelosi picking up the unsupported, unsubstantiated claim and running with it - in front of the American people - as if it were true.

You can imagine why this would be the sort of talking point that would resonate with Democrats. Here’s @JeffMerkley, joining @NewDay to do the same thing Pelosi did.

Perhaps you remember @HillaryClinton.

And you can imagine that former campaign staffers, like @davidplouffe, would do something similar. It’s good news for the home team.

This is how these stories that sound too good to be true always gather steam: flimsy reporting, amplified by self-interested politicians, and then folks with large platforms add fuel to the fire until its public record.

@paulkrugman has basically made a career of this.

Naturally some of our usual suspects, like @johnpavlovitz, jumped onboard this narrative.

And of course the folks who play doctors and public health experts on Twitter got into the mix. Because of course they would. It confirms their priors.

Here we have:

@JeffreyGuterman
@BarbaraBollier
@ColdWarScience
@RachelBitecofer (aka “The Doc”)

As a general rule, if a story that cites unnamed sources confirms your priors (from Netflix or otherwise) in a way that seems too good to be true, @AmandaMarcotte, it probably is.

I simply don’t have the time and patience to get to everyone who did this individually - and this is driving at a broader point - so I’m gonna lump a bunch in together.

Here’s:
@sarahw
@grantstern
@ryanlcooper
@AmandiOnAir

I’ll be honest. I’m a little surprised that this passed anyone’s sniff test.

A new admin claiming that their predecessor (& opponent) did “nothing” despite administering the *same number of vaccines per day* that the new one is setting as a TARGET?

Doesn’t that seem ridiculous?

Apparently not to some.

And unfortunately I have a feeling we’ll have a lot more of these types of news cycles now that we’ve had a changing of the guard, and the people who are friendly with the media are back in charge.

So buckle up, folks. After four years of disbelief, fears of misinformation and disinterest in flattering stories about the government, I have a feeling we’ll have a lot more less-than-true stories where this cycle came from.

And I’m here until they ban me to help unpack it all.

Also, this is the kind of thing that makes the so-called war against disinformation utterly ridiculous to conservatives.

This is disinformation, actively pushed for political ends.

If that doesn’t get a Twitter flag or a fact check, then I’m not interested in what does.