Gosh, who’da thought they couldn’t trust Rolling Stone magazine. Oh, wait. LOL
As Twitchy readers know, Rolling Stone magazine published a now completely debunked story about an Oklahoma hospital being SO OVERWHELMED with patients who had overdosed on ‘horse dewormer meds’ that gunshot victims were having to wait for beds.
Now, you’d think they would actually consider reaching out to the hospital before running with such a stupid story, but we imagine they were so tempted by the idea of writing about some dumb rednecks in flyover country that they couldn’t help themselves.
And have once again damaged their already crap reputation.
Drew Holden did our job for us (thanks Drew!) and pulled a ton of tweets and screenshots from Lefties and the mainstream media actually pushing this ridiculous story:
🧵THREAD🧵
We’ve got to talk about the Rolling Stone invermectin article. Turns out the story about rural hospitals so flooded with ODs that they couldn’t treat other patients was made up, entirely invented.
A lot of people took the bait, and I’ve got the screenshots.⤵️
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
First, for context, here’s the original piece from @RollingStone and the follow up from the actual hospital saying the story was BS and that the one (one!) person the story quotes doesn’t work at that hospital anymore (and hasn’t in months). pic.twitter.com/6k4FjaQWD3
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
But it wasn’t just a single story out in the ether. Plenty of other places picked up the story, too, with no additional sourcing or research.
Here’s @BusinessInsider (@thecherylt) parroting the scoop that wasn’t true to begin with. pic.twitter.com/ygO8ezliTA
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
Recommended
And nobody thought to fact-check anything.
How pathetic is this?
But the real champion of this tall tale was @MSNBC. @maddow had a tweet about it that went viral.
She’s got an audience of millions of people and couldn’t be bothered to even look into a story that pretty obviously doesn’t pass the sniff test. pic.twitter.com/t6sFrXDzrt
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
It fits her NARRATIVE.
She couldn’t care less if the story passed a sniff test.
That @briantylercohen pushed a baseless lie on a show called “No Lie” is really just a little too on the nose. @NoLieWithBTC pic.twitter.com/IRiL28ba1f
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
You guys remember Brian – he was the guy who told wounded warrior Joey Jones to go serve in Afghanistan.
He did apologize but seemed he didn’t learn anything from it.
We even had an executive producer from MSNBC push the story that wasn’t. @laurenpeikoff
You know what’s a good way to not be derisively referred to as “fake news”?
Stop pushing fake news. pic.twitter.com/RwjjxslJ8U
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
But that’s the only news they have unless they want to start getting honest about the disaster Biden really is.
For some reason British outlets went all-in on this one, too.
Will we get any apologies from @guardian or @DailyMailUK? pic.twitter.com/BRFxNwocbf
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
I just really don’t understand why seemingly real news outlets – like @Newsweek @NYDailyNews and @thehill – didn’t bother to even look into this story before they pushed this narrative?
Didn’t it sound odd? Wasn’t it worth investigating? Maybe a single phone call? pic.twitter.com/ONStIZL87I
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
Maybe a single phone call.
Heh.
Needless to say, a certain variety of Twitter bluecheck couldn’t help themselves on this story. Here’s @shannonrwatts of Moms Demand Action. pic.twitter.com/ZJ9aCKyIUi
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
And Shannon is usually so concerned with honesty and truth.
We are so kidding.
This sentiment was pretty widespread because it just fit the narrative perfectly – “look at these dumb hicks and their horse medication!” right, @dabeard? pic.twitter.com/rLpox5yuK0
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
@DrJasonJohnson took the conspiracy theory a step further, suggesting that Senator Inhofe was somehow profiting (?) from the situation that wasn’t actually taking place.
Dr. Johnson, I think you owe @JimInhofe an apology. pic.twitter.com/Ak6jYZvegk
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
And plenty of actual bad actors got involved in pushing this one, too. I don’t know how @DrEricDing hasn’t been kicked off of Twitter by now. He’s a bottomless well of misinformation. pic.twitter.com/8FA6ABNTTu
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
Holy crap.
He’s got me blocked but @joncoopertweets continues to be one of the worst, most dishonest people on this platform. pic.twitter.com/YTBw5MhigP
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
Jon has most of Twitter blocked so only the same sort of loser troglodytes can read his crap tweets anyway.
Obligatory @kurteichenwald mention. pic.twitter.com/ABFdSXiEzP
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
The Onion can’t compete with Kurt Eichenwald either, but here we are.
I won’t pretend I expected much from either @dailykos or @OccupyDemocrats but both of these are pretty egregious. pic.twitter.com/HieAh0Ofsz
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
I don’t usually include people who aren’t verified but I couldn’t resist this one.@RVAwonk is a postdoc studying “mis/disinformation” and had a whole thread *actively pushing disinformation* pic.twitter.com/5qFL6OOqCK
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
She claims it’s the right-wing’s fault they all fell for the story.
No, we’re not kidding.
There were simply too many people to break each of them out as their own tweet.
Here we’ve got:@justinbaragona @PoliticusSarah @georgehahn (again with the narrative)@timmarchman pic.twitter.com/zHsB4aCVMp
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
They spend so much time being wrong, you’d think eventually they’d start questioning their ability to choose which stories to even cover.
See what I’m saying?@mims @EoinHiggins_ (quickly becoming a thread favorite)@GidMK (“health nerd”)@AngryBlackLady (this is definitely an illustrative example of something, just not the thing that you think it is) pic.twitter.com/QTfwvJlAFD
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
I’m running out of space and patience but one last four-box:@rolandsmartin @lanaveenker @cruickshank @johnpavlovitz pic.twitter.com/zma89MwEjO
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
Blaming the Republican Party.
Buncha dbags.
It should go without saying, but inventing a narrative out of thin air simply because it confirms your priors is not going to help rebuild trust in the media.
It would’ve taken a single phone call to shoot this story down.
Why didn’t that happen?
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
And the same people who purport to be concerned about misinformation and how it spreads on platforms like Twitter will surely be silent on this.
Where’s the nashing of teeth from the “disinformation” reporters? Where are the Twitter content warnings? Where’s the outrage?
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
You won’t hear any. Because this is the acceptable type of political lie.
And none of these people or outlets will learn anything. They’ll keep doing this.
Because they care more about scoring cheap dunks on their opponents than getting the truth.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
They care more about scoring cheap dunks on their opponents than getting the truth.
Boo and yah.
For new folks/those asking, I don’t have anything to sell or subscribe to.
But if you’re able, food banks remain in desperate need of support. For those in DC (or otherwise) I think Capital Area Food Bank does great work. https://t.co/XEl3JS8wiv
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
This. ^
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