Just another day at the office
It might be an overstatement to say that Fox News lies about everything, but it's fair to suggest that Fox News will lie about anything, because nothing is too small for Fox News to lie about in service of the cause. So this story -- starting its career at the No. 2 spot on the Fox homepage Saturday, then taking a few cycles off, then returning to the same position Sunday afternoon -- isn't an example of the extraordinary; it's literally just another day at the office.
As usual, the homepage headlines are a tad bit livelier than the ones on the story itself, so let's start with Saturday's: Not "Bitter pill," which is just there to remind you of the deserts of sinners, but the subhed: "Fauci roasted for new paper pushing debunked Trump claim, COVID origin theory." Let's say three things have to be true for the hed to be true: Fauci has to have been roasted; his new paper has to have pushed a claim and a theory, and at least the claim has to have been "debunked." (Under a distributed reading, "debunked" could apply to the theory too, but the lede suggests the narrow reading.)
There are some different twists in the Sunday subhed, "Fauci scorched over new 'scientific' paper riddled with 'false claims.'" Scorching is also a fairly low bar to clear, but "riddled" is going to need an extra step: at least some degree of counting and judgment over and above a couple of angry tweets from conservative influencers.* Fox is asserting "riddled" on its own hook (hint: it's the same two claims), but the quote marks are murky. Is Fox explaining that this is a scientific (as opposed to a popular or trade) paper, or is it nudging you with scare quotes? In US practice, the quotes around "false claims" mean those are the exact words someone used, but in UK practice (Fox headlines often have a strong redtop flavor), they could be "claim quotes": placed around a phrase to indicate the substance of an assertion but not a direct quotation.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the federal government's coronavirus pandemic response, is facing criticism on social media over a manuscript published in a top journal where he maintains his position that the virus originated in nature and cites a debunked claim that President-elect Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to stop the virus.
Well, there's your scorching and roasting.** "Criticism on social media" in this case means two regular contributors to the pool of right-wing Twitter accounts that Fox draws on when a Harris or Walz or Biden needs to be slammed, mocked or blasted, plus one newcomer from the National Review stable. No scare quotes around "top journal" (fair enough; the Oxford Academic homepage lists its impact factor as 8.2). And Fauci's offenses? He "maintains his position" on the virus's origin and "cites a debunked claim that President-elect Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to stop the virus." The claim has been debunked, but Fauci doesn't make it. (Nor does the phrase "false claims" appear in the story, so that's a headline invention.)
Fauci, along with researcher Gregory Folkers, published a paper in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal this week with the title, "HIV/AIDS and COVID-19: Shared Lessons from Two Pandemics."
Fauci, who faced intense criticism for his handling of the pandemic, was critical of Trump’s handling of the pandemic in the paper.
Oh, stop the press.
"With COVID-19, the role of political leadership at the highest level – or the lack thereof – was again shown to be critical," the authors wrote. "As COVID-19 exploded globally and in the United States, President Donald Trump frequently minimized the seriousness of the pandemic, repeatedly claiming that COVID-19 would just ‘go away’ In the first full year of the pandemic (2020, the last year of his presidency) he failed to use his bully pulpit to encourage people to use available ‘low-tech’ tools such as masks/respirators, better ventilation, and physical distancing to reduce the risk of infection."
All true. But here comes the scary part, still quoting Fox quoting the article:
"Trump also gave credence to unproven and potentially dangerous substances for COVID-19 prevention and treatment such as bleach injections, the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine and the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Many of his hundreds of communications during the COVID-19 pandemic were missed opportunities for political leadership in promoting policies and practices to mitigate the impact of a raging pandemic."
Also true. Fauci doesn't claim that Trump "told Americans to inject bleach," because he didn't -- though he did ruminate about the virtues of injecting disinfectants. As Fox quoted an online critic of Biden's in the last week of the 2024 campaign: "It's literally on video" (in this NBC clip, starting around 00:25).
The paper also says that "abundant evidence from top evolutionary virologists and leading scientists in other fields strongly suggests that the virus jumped species from an animal reservoir to humans in the Huanan market in Wuhan, China, and then spread throughout China and the rest of the world."
Several media outlets have fact-checked and debunked the claim that Trump instructed people to inject themselves with bleach including Politifact, which called President Biden’s accusation "mostly false."
Hard to see "abundant evidence" as a false claim either, no matter how badly Fox's feeling are hurt. Fauci doesn't assert proof; he talks about the amount of evidence that "strongly suggests" a position. And, again, Fauci doesn't make the told-to-inject claim. But on to the Usual Suspects:
"Fauci is an embarrassment," conservative communicator Steve Guest posted on X.
"Oy vey," National Review contributor Pradeep Shanker posted on X.
"Fauci is out with a new scientific paper on HIV/AIDS & COVID-19 where he falsely claims Trump told people to inject bleach & where he argues COVID-19 has a natural origin (Wuhan lab leak not even mentioned) by citing the same authors who wrote the infamous Proximal Origins paper," author and journalist Jerry Dunleavy posted on X.
Makes you almost regret quoting the actual paper, doesn't it?
As usual, the homepage headlines are a tad bit livelier than the ones on the story itself, so let's start with Saturday's: Not "Bitter pill," which is just there to remind you of the deserts of sinners, but the subhed: "Fauci roasted for new paper pushing debunked Trump claim, COVID origin theory." Let's say three things have to be true for the hed to be true: Fauci has to have been roasted; his new paper has to have pushed a claim and a theory, and at least the claim has to have been "debunked." (Under a distributed reading, "debunked" could apply to the theory too, but the lede suggests the narrow reading.)
There are some different twists in the Sunday subhed, "Fauci scorched over new 'scientific' paper riddled with 'false claims.'" Scorching is also a fairly low bar to clear, but "riddled" is going to need an extra step: at least some degree of counting and judgment over and above a couple of angry tweets from conservative influencers.* Fox is asserting "riddled" on its own hook (hint: it's the same two claims), but the quote marks are murky. Is Fox explaining that this is a scientific (as opposed to a popular or trade) paper, or is it nudging you with scare quotes? In US practice, the quotes around "false claims" mean those are the exact words someone used, but in UK practice (Fox headlines often have a strong redtop flavor), they could be "claim quotes": placed around a phrase to indicate the substance of an assertion but not a direct quotation.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the federal government's coronavirus pandemic response, is facing criticism on social media over a manuscript published in a top journal where he maintains his position that the virus originated in nature and cites a debunked claim that President-elect Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to stop the virus.
Well, there's your scorching and roasting.** "Criticism on social media" in this case means two regular contributors to the pool of right-wing Twitter accounts that Fox draws on when a Harris or Walz or Biden needs to be slammed, mocked or blasted, plus one newcomer from the National Review stable. No scare quotes around "top journal" (fair enough; the Oxford Academic homepage lists its impact factor as 8.2). And Fauci's offenses? He "maintains his position" on the virus's origin and "cites a debunked claim that President-elect Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to stop the virus." The claim has been debunked, but Fauci doesn't make it. (Nor does the phrase "false claims" appear in the story, so that's a headline invention.)
Fauci, along with researcher Gregory Folkers, published a paper in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal this week with the title, "HIV/AIDS and COVID-19: Shared Lessons from Two Pandemics."
Fauci, who faced intense criticism for his handling of the pandemic, was critical of Trump’s handling of the pandemic in the paper.
Oh, stop the press.
"With COVID-19, the role of political leadership at the highest level – or the lack thereof – was again shown to be critical," the authors wrote. "As COVID-19 exploded globally and in the United States, President Donald Trump frequently minimized the seriousness of the pandemic, repeatedly claiming that COVID-19 would just ‘go away’ In the first full year of the pandemic (2020, the last year of his presidency) he failed to use his bully pulpit to encourage people to use available ‘low-tech’ tools such as masks/respirators, better ventilation, and physical distancing to reduce the risk of infection."
All true. But here comes the scary part, still quoting Fox quoting the article:
"Trump also gave credence to unproven and potentially dangerous substances for COVID-19 prevention and treatment such as bleach injections, the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine and the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Many of his hundreds of communications during the COVID-19 pandemic were missed opportunities for political leadership in promoting policies and practices to mitigate the impact of a raging pandemic."
Also true. Fauci doesn't claim that Trump "told Americans to inject bleach," because he didn't -- though he did ruminate about the virtues of injecting disinfectants. As Fox quoted an online critic of Biden's in the last week of the 2024 campaign: "It's literally on video" (in this NBC clip, starting around 00:25).
The paper also says that "abundant evidence from top evolutionary virologists and leading scientists in other fields strongly suggests that the virus jumped species from an animal reservoir to humans in the Huanan market in Wuhan, China, and then spread throughout China and the rest of the world."
Several media outlets have fact-checked and debunked the claim that Trump instructed people to inject themselves with bleach including Politifact, which called President Biden’s accusation "mostly false."
Hard to see "abundant evidence" as a false claim either, no matter how badly Fox's feeling are hurt. Fauci doesn't assert proof; he talks about the amount of evidence that "strongly suggests" a position. And, again, Fauci doesn't make the told-to-inject claim. But on to the Usual Suspects:
"Fauci is an embarrassment," conservative communicator Steve Guest posted on X.
"Oy vey," National Review contributor Pradeep Shanker posted on X.
"Fauci is out with a new scientific paper on HIV/AIDS & COVID-19 where he falsely claims Trump told people to inject bleach & where he argues COVID-19 has a natural origin (Wuhan lab leak not even mentioned) by citing the same authors who wrote the infamous Proximal Origins paper," author and journalist Jerry Dunleavy posted on X.
Makes you almost regret quoting the actual paper, doesn't it?
Fox News Digital reached out to the NIH for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
I suppose that's politer than "RTFP," but there's always hope.
I suppose that's politer than "RTFP," but there's always hope.
Conclusion? Fox doesn't want you to learn about infectious diseases, unless they can be blamed on Democratic election interference or hordes of cat-eating immigrants. It does want to refresh your memory in case you'd forgotten who the real bad guys were during the pandemic. And there's no point in bothering with those pesky facts if they get in the way.
* Only a few of them alleged to have been funded by the Kremlin, and those have been rare in sourcing since the story broke in August.
** If you're scoring along at home, scorching is slightly more common than roasting in headlines among the top 10 stories in 2024 (16 unique cases to 13, not counting subordinated clauses) but much more likely to be active (81.3% to 53.8%). The targets of scorching are invariably liberals or liberal causes, with only one neutral a target of roasting. Liberals or neutrals can roast, but only when the object is farther left.
** If you're scoring along at home, scorching is slightly more common than roasting in headlines among the top 10 stories in 2024 (16 unique cases to 13, not counting subordinated clauses) but much more likely to be active (81.3% to 53.8%). The targets of scorching are invariably liberals or liberal causes, with only one neutral a target of roasting. Liberals or neutrals can roast, but only when the object is farther left.
posted by fev at 11:06 PM
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