|
Caught In The Act – New York Times “Selectively Misquotes” Scientists To Fit Its “Prescribed Narrative”
The New York Times continues Trump's anti-China campaign by claiming that China hindered a WHO investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and is withholding data.
On W.H.O. Trip, China Refused to Hand Over Important Data
The information could be key to determining how and when the outbreak started, and to learning how to prevent future pandemics.
Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, independent investigators for the W.H.O. said on Friday.
The investigators, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan, said disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.
China’s continued resistance to revealing information about the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, the scientists say, makes it difficult for them to uncover important clues that could help stop future outbreaks of such dangerous diseases.
“If you are data focused, and if you are a professional,” said Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, then obtaining data is “like for a clinical doctor looking at the patient and seeing them by your own eyes.”
…
Peter Daszak, a member of the W.H.O. team and the president of EcoHealth Alliance in New York, said the trip was emotionally draining, as he and the team came to terms with the trauma of the early days of the pandemic. The team interviewed some of the first people to fall ill with Covid-19 in Wuhan, as well as medical workers.
“The world doesn’t realize, you know, that they were the first to get this thing,” Dr. Daszak said, “and they didn’t know how bad it was.”
While the Times claims that the Chinese have more data than they provided (they don't) and insinuates that they have something to hide, the researchers quoted in its piece reject both as nonsense.
Linking the NYT propaganda piece Peter Daszak refuted its basic tone:
Peter Daszak @PeterDaszak – 11:27 UTC · Feb 13, 2021
This was NOT my experience on @WHO mission. As lead of animal/environment working group I found trust & openness w/ my China counterparts. We DID get access to critical new data throughout. We DID increase our understanding of likely spillover pathways.
New data included env. & animal carcass testing, names of suppliers to Huanan Market, analyses of excess mortality in Hubei, range of covid-like symptoms for months prior, sequence data linked to early cases & site visits w/ unvetted live Q&A etc. All in report coming soon!
Quoting Daszak's tweet Thea Fischer pitched in:
Thea K Fischer, Prof. i PH Virus Inf. og Epidemier @TheaKFischer – 14:03 UTC · Feb 13, 2021
This was NOT my experience either on the Epi-side. We DID build up a good relationsship in the Chinese/Int Epi-team! Allowing for heated arguments reflects a deep level of engagement in the room. Our quotes are intendedly twisted casting shadows over important scientific work.
bigger
To which Daszak responded:
Peter Daszak @PeterDaszak – 14:07 UTC · Feb 13, 2021
Replying to @TheaKFischer
Hear! Hear! It's disappointing to spend time w/ journalists explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China, to see our colleagues selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began. Shame on you @nytimes !
bigger
The charges laid against China by NYT were “…refused to share raw data… disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts…” These allegations were explicitly said to have been made by independent researchers. At this point, quotation of the charges are to be expected as illustration as well as attribution and documentation of the allegations.
“If you are data focused, and if you are a professional,” said Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, then obtaining data is “like for a clinical doctor looking at the patient and seeing them by your own eyes.” This quote is a general statement about how important seeing the data is, with *no bearing* on whether the Chinese withheld data until shouted at, or whatever.
“The world doesn’t realize, you know, that they were the first to get this thing,” Dr. Daszak said, “and they didn’t know how bad it was.” *Nor does this quote have any bearing* on whether the Chinese withheld data until shouted at, or whatever.
Anyone doing a close reading would expect to see quotes that are actually relevant to the allegations. *Not* producing relevant quotes is failure to support the charges.
“Peter Daszak, a member of the W.H.O. team and the president of EcoHealth Alliance in New York, said the trip was emotionally draining, as he and the team came to terms with the trauma of the early days of the pandemic. The team interviewed some of the first people to fall ill with Covid-19 in Wuhan, as well as medical workers.” This indirect quote doesn’t support the NYT reading either.
Pedantry alert! These are none of them misquotations, not even selective ones. The wording wasn’t changed to support the allegations, obviously, since they don’t. They are not even selective quotes that seemingly support the allegations because they are taken out of context. Neither the direct quotes nor the indirect quotes say *anything* about the behavior of the Chinese scientists. They don’t even refer to the behavior of the independent WHO scientists, as in shouting. The indirect quote about the feelings of the WHO researchers can even be read as hinting at empathy with the Chinese. But it does not complain the obstruction from the Chinese scientists drained them. So, speaking strictly (pedantically) the NYT did not selectively misquote, it *mischaracterized* the observations from the WHO researchers. Unable to support the NYT version, vaguely negative remarks or general observations were substituted in lieu of documentation of the claim.
The OP is correct I think is calling this a lie, but it is not the lie direct. The mainstream media rarely directly falsify quotations. In this example, the NYT didn’t even *directly* say that the remark about the importance of data was the explanation for why the Chinese scientists’ behavior was so obstructive and frustrating. They merely hoped proximity would allow the inference.
The reputable mainstream media do even more “lying” by omission than they do by such devices as this. Their most effective lies are conventional wisdom and unspoken assumptions, like an (unconscious?) assumption that American exceptionalism really is a thing.
The thing for the general readership of the mainstream media is that close reading is not only tiring, it’s effectiveness depends on knowing a lot of background information. The remark about the importance of data, for instance, loses all of its seeming relevance to the charges, when you realize from prior knowledge, it’s background, not a direct statement against the Chinese scientists. The lie is about whipping up anger and fear.
Unfortunately for the Trumpers, the QAnon, the cryptofascists etc. their charges against the mainstream media is exactly the wrong one, that the MSM is directly lying, openly falsifying, simply faking news. But the respectable mainstream media don’t do that as a rule. They do what the OP shows us, making charges and inciting emotion but *not* by simply falsifying the facts. Indeed, they even put in quotes that they hope might pass for actual evidence, but as far as just making stuff up…generally. Really, the mainstream media most likely to simply make stuff up are still Fox News, Breitbart, the tabloids (you know, like the Murdochs’ Star.)
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 13 2021 19:57 utc | 25
William Gruff@71 writes “We have a couple pathetic apologists for the #FakeNews Mockingbird mass media offering up defenses for their lies. I wonder if back in the real world they are fake journalists who are paid by the big business oligarchy to deliberately disinform the population and who are trying to defend their scumbaggery?”
The first sentence is a combination of personal abuse and misrepresentation, mixed with too much cowardice to name names. The second sentence is an ad hominem fallacy applied to the imaginary idea of journalists posting at MoA to defend their profession, a truly stupid ploy in rhetoric.
“B-b-but no individual sentence that the New York Langley Times published can be called a lie! Some sentences that are not related to one another just happened to end up close together in such a way that it is possible to misinterpret them to mean something else! It is just a little sloppy editing, and it is the readers’ faults for jumping to conclusions!”
Like the imaginary journalists, this is imaginary. Being in quotes it is literally a falsification, that is to say, a lie. It is not an accident Gruff pretends to indignation over lies then lies. Basically everything Gruff says is a lie and any accidental grains of truth are there mostly by accident.
“Wrong! Moreover, trying to argue that the New York Langley Times is not being deliberately deceitful is itself deliberately deceitful. It is a lie. The mass media apologists in this thread know that their argument is bogus, and that makes it a lie. The individual sentences are irrelevant. Nobody remembers a particular sentence five seconds after reading it unless it is one of those key phrases that is being hammered by multiple outlets into the public consciousness like ‘Capitol riots!’, which happens to be a full blown lie in that case. What people remember is the narrative, and if the narrative that the servants of empire in the Mockingbird mass media are manufacturing is false then it is a lie, and those fake
‘journalists’ producing that lie of a narrative are liars.”
Gruff’s narrative here is that somebody said the NYT wasn’t lying in this story, except of course Gruff can’t quote anyone saying that—I explicitly said I thought it was a lie—which is why Gruff made up the imaginary quote above. False narratives are I still think lies, which shows it is Gruff who is lying here. In particular, Gruff is repeating the conventional wisdom of conservative media, and the cryptofascist clique in the commentariat (the majority?) There were riots at the Capital, they were by Trump supporters trying to overturn the the election despite Trump’s loss. Gruff’s narrative is worse than the NYT article because it does rely on the lie direct. The insistence that there is no difference between direct lying, total falsification like Gruff’s made-up quotes and the rhetorical trickery in the NYT article is partly about a bare-faced liar trying to accuse the target first, as a distraction. But the real need I think is for an uncritical rejection of all facts, including well-known and well-supported facts, by the simple expedient of an ad hominem fallacy. The NYT is the CIA (not true, you know, Gruff lies all the time,) therefore no facts ever be acknowledged. The NYT article doesn’t support it’s own allegations and should be rejected out of hand. But NYT articles where the quotes do support the articles? Oh, that’s a different matter altogether…but that’s the truth that the Gruffs of this world hate.
“‘Those Trumpers’ are perhaps not ‘sophisticated’ enough to fool themselves into believing that the New York Langley Times is truthful by parsing the individual sentences and realizing that none of those sentences on their own are false. Unlike the sophisticated morons (sophomores?) who do manage that feat of self-deceit, ‘those Trumpers’ only look at the narratives being pushed by that filthy shit-stained rag of a journal and recognize those narratives
for what they are: LIES. In this regard ‘those Trumpers’ are far wiser than the empire’s disgusting #FakeNews fake ‘journalists’ and their sophisticated moron apologists.”
You don’t have to be terribly sophisticated to realize there is a difference between just plain making stuff up (like Gruff’s imagined quotations) and rhetorical trickery. The notion of a direct lie, as opposed to other kinds of lies, is not some newfangled hoity-toity word game, it’s a simple and useful idea, easily grasped by those willing to make any effort at all. Only political swindlers like Gruff need the uncritical rejection of facts, only manipulators like Gruff need to dismiss inconvenient facts with an ad hominem fallacy of liar. The ocean of self-pity at being looked down on I suspect is neurotic projection, an uneasy fear that the contempt the Gruffs feel for their targets may be returned in kind.
Simply dismissing inconvenient facts because of an uncritical insistence that the people you don’t like are liars, liars, liars without troubling to draw even the simplest distinction between direct lies, simple fabulation and cheap, commonplace rhetoric only helps political swindlers like Gruff. Again, it is the conservative media that are the most prone to simple straightforward fiction, like Gruff’s quotations. Like Gruff, they don’t even give others the implicit respect of *pretending* to support their claims by adding even irrelevant quotes! And, again, conservative media are just as prone to repeating conventional wisdom, or official ideology (which comes in variants, for the same reason cars come in different models, namely, marketing to different tastes.) These bare-faced lies are not felt to be lies but are deemed obvious truths. The cure for this is *not* just shrieking liar, liar, liar but knowing more. Knowing things is the key to effective critical thinking. A gut reaction of skepticism isn’t critical thinking, it’s a gut reaction, period. Ignorance is the true shield of ideology/conventional wisdom. Simple suppression of the news is a powerfully effective form of lying, though still not the lie direct. But contra the Gruffs this is not the sole province of the so-called MSM (always implied to be liberal or Jewish for the more advanced cryptofascists.) Conservative mainstream media are even more apt to suppress news for national security reasons.
To cut to the nitty gritty, to address what is probably the real issue, Gruff can’t prove Trump won the election or that the attempted autogolpe of January 6 didn’t happen by merely screaming “Liar!” at the TV set. That ploy is a shameless lie itself.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Feb 14 2021 15:26 utc | 89
|
