Democracy dies in disinformation reporting
Ben Collins dons his hotdog costume and pledges to go after the guy responsible for this.
This week there’s been a lot of pushback against NBC’s Ben Collins just because he uncritically spread falsehoods about the Israeli attack on a hospital in the Gaza strip which killed hundreds, only for it more likely to have been a Palestinian rocket falling apart en route to Israel and detonating in a Gaza parking lot, with a death toll much smaller than alleged by Hamas, which is shocking because they’re normally so reliable and judicious about this stuff:
Collins is treated as an expert in the burgeoning field of countering the spread of misinformation. Yet his error rate is noteworthy.
Take the Gaza hospital explosion, for example. On Tuesday, reports surfaced that the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza had come under attack, resulting in as many as 500 deaths. The New York Times ran with "Israeli Strikes Kill Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say." Underneath this headline was an image of an obliterated building—readers who squinted would have noticed that this was not the hospital, but a completely different target.
The Times' only source for information about the explosion was the Gaza Health Ministry; mainstream reporting noted that Palestinian authorities laid the blame squarely on an Israeli airstrike. Subsequent intelligence reports from both Israel and the U.S. provide credible evidence that the hospital was most probably struck by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group.
Did Collins soberly wait for these facts to come in? Nope. The award-winning disinformation expert helped circulate the inaccurate claims of the Palestinian authorities. When other voices on social media recommended caution, Collins chimed in to assert that any delay in reporting the horrific casualty numbers represented a profound moral failing. (Casualty estimates have yet to be confirmed.)
In theory, the confusion surrounding the hospital explosion is a great topic for a self-described disinformation reporter. Many left-leaning writers and political figures recklessly endorsed the Palestinian view that Israel had bombed the hospital. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) both made statements blaming Israel and did not swiftly delete them after what really happened became clearer. Omar eventually acknowledged the new information, but Tlaib again blamed Israel for the explosion during a speech at a pro-Palestine rally outside the U.S. Capitol. Is this not something worthy of coverage by Collins and company?
Keep in mind that Collins represents the journalistic side of a multi-faceted effort to monitor and eliminate purportedly wrong ideas. Disinformation tracking has become an industry unto itself, and aspects of the industry enjoy government funding: A disinformation watchdog that called on advertisers to divest from various non-liberal news sources—including Reason—received funding from the U.S. State Department.
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If you're going to paint broad swaths of opinion that depart from mainstream orthodoxy as paranoid and conspiratorial, you should take great pains to avoid echoing paranoia and conspiracy. You should also beware of elementary errors—like immediately taking a terrorist group's assertions at face value—and call out others who make them.
Perhaps the Walter Cronkite Awards ought to have slightly higher standards?
Collins is not the only journalist who gets things wrong, of course. But there's something extra galling about journalistic errors when they are perpetrated by someone who holds himself out as especially talented at identifying lies. That's the real problem with the army of self-appointed fact-checkers and misinformation watchdogs who police social media with particular focus on alternative content creators—they're frequently no less wrong than anyone else.
I have to step in and defend Ben Collins here.
First of all, he’s a disinformation reporter. That’s literally what he calls himself. Complaining that he’s spreading disinformation is like complaining that a Memphis Grizzlies beat writer is spreading news about the Memphis Grizzlies.
Second, if Walter Cronkite’s views on 9/11 are any indication, I’d say Collins absolutely deserves an award named after him:
When Osama bin Laden released a videotaped diatribe on the eve of the 2004 vote, Walter Cronkite (Walter Cronkite!) emerged from retirement to tell Larry King that the thing had somehow been engineered by Rove:
“I’m a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”
Legacy media outlets often push back against upstart online publications for spreading disinformation and falsehoods and conspiracy theories. As the proprietor of an upstart online publication, I think they’re absolutely right to do so and it’s kind of crazy that you’re even paying attention to what a no-name like me has to say about anything.
But it’s not like established outlets have covered themselves in glory this week, either. On several occasions I’ve defended The New York Times from right-wing criticism, but the recent stealth-editing and tombstoning1 makes me wonder if TrumpIsJesusHillaryIsSatan4ever dot com might have had a point about the Grey Lady all along.
Of course, Team Collins has identified the real culprit: the Cybertruck guy.
This would be a good place to use the “why would ______ do this?” shooting meme, but I’m reminded more of the scene in Forrest Gump where Jenny’s asshole boyfriend apologizes for hitting her but says he was just mad about Vietnam.
There were many things wrong with Twitter even before Elon Musk bought it, and it’s gotten worse ever since it became X or whatever it’s called this week. Even the one actually good idea Musk had for the platform - Community Notes - is now being abused by extremists and grifters adding notes with false information, screenshotting them and circulating the images far and wide after they’ve been taken down.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
But it’s not Musk who made Ben Collins join the outrage mob and prioritize getting those sweet, sweet “likes” and retweets over getting the story right and making sure he’s not spreading misinformation which is getting synagogues firebombed.
To mangle a metaphor: even if Musk gave him the gun, Ben Collins chose to start firing wildly into the air only to be shocked when the bullets came down. Not unlike a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, actually.
“Tombstoning” is a term for newspapers posting a photo next to a headline which leaves a misleading impression. Usually it’s about making it look like Ryan Reynolds threw a man in front of a train, not making readers think a destroyed building in a completely different city was a hospital destroyed by Israel.