Rolling Stone slammed for spreading false story on COVID patients
'Outnumbered' hosts discuss how Rolling Stone was forced to issue an 'update' to a COVID story.
The Ruthless podcast lambasted the media following discredited reporting from Rolling Stone and USA Today last week.
The conversation began on Tuesday when co-host Michael Duncan asserted that the media and the Biden administration are "so invested" in "creating this outgroup of people to demonize" in order to pivot the blame away from President Biden, who campaigned on "shutting down" the coronavirus last year.
Duncan then pointed to the viral Rolling Stone report that alleged that "gunshot victims" were left waiting for care since "horse dewormer overdoses" overwhelmed Oklahoma hospitals based on what a doctor told a local news outlet. The so-called "horse dewormer" was in reference to ivermectin, a drug used to treat infections and parasites in humans. The FDA issued a statement telling people to not use the drug to treat COVID-19.
"The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals. Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea," the FDA website states.
"The media is so desperate to just dunk on people that they create this false narrative for that liberal audience that they built irrespective to the truth, right?" Duncan said. "Obviously, this drug isn't a horse dewormer- I'm not a doctor. I'm not telling you to take it for COVID… but what I know is it's not a horse dewormer. There is an application for horses, but there's an application for people!"
"Yeah," co-host Comfortably Smug agreed. "It's like why are people eating mold? Well, it's called penicillin."
"It's called penicillin. You gonna stop taking penicillin because it comes from mold?" Duncan continued. "But no, they'd rather lie and get the cheap dunk on people than tell you the truth and they further undermine their own credibility. And what we found out with this story was- it's fake news."
Duncan then blasted "half of Resistance Twitter" for spreading the discredited story without having their tweets taken down or labeled "misinformation."
"And then [CNN media correspondent] Brian Stelter goes on his show and he's like ‘Oh gosh, why does nobody trust the media?’ It's like you did this to your f---in' selves. I don't give a s--- how you feel like we don't listen to you. This is why!" Duncan exclaimed.
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Smug mocked the recent media trend of "misinformation reporters" who allegedly fact-check and don't "go after" people like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who shared the discredited story to her 10 million Twitter followers and has yet to delete her tweet.
"The whole idea of a ‘disinformation’ vertical for a media company is a super PAC. That's what it is. And they get talking points from the DNC and clips that are sent to them and they say, 'These are the things that we see that are on the internet today that you have to disprove," Duncan said.
Ruthless co-host Josh Holmes panned the media for dictating which COVID treatments journalists approve versus allowing patients and their doctors to use their discretion.
"Here are these people who are just hypercritical of anything that doesn't come out of Anthony Fauci's mouth," Holmes said. "At the same time, they're calling drugs horse tranquilizers or horse dewormers and suggesting that they can't be any helpful under any circumstance and basically practicing medicine without a license as they're typing on the computer."
"I just don't know what class they took in journalism school that says when you report, you're supposed to defer to the government's opinion of things and not be skeptical, you know?" Duncan chuckled.
"Like if Anthony Fauci doesn't say it, it doesn't exist. And it's just created this bizarre situation where the left is actually more responsive to try to, like, poo-poo and provide some intellectual shaming for anyone who is trying to get through to the COVID pandemic that isn't prescribed by Anthony Fauci!" Holmes exclaimed. "The media has put themselves in a position where they are literally litigating what is good health and what is bad health and they've been wrong throughout this entire pandemic."
The co-hosts then pivoted to USA Today's botched "fact-check" that alleged President Biden only checked his watch at the dignified transfer ceremony honoring the U.S. servicemen who died in the Kabul terror attack "after" the ceremony instead of during, suggesting that the Gold Star families who witnessed the distracted president were lying.
Smug slammed USA Today fact-checker Daniel Funke for his defensive tweets saying journalists are "human" and make mistakes.
"You have one job, literally!" Smug exclaimed. "Your job was one thing- to check if this is true or not, and you messed it up!
"The bar has to be higher," Duncan said. "Like if that's your job to be the oracle on high who says truth and false and that's going to determine what we're allowed to say, you better be right!"
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"To go back to the purpose that we said that they're doing all of this is they have to create an outgroup to blame," Smug told his co-hosts. "They spent a year smearing Trump and trying to drive down his numbers and say 'Covid is Trump's fault, Covid is Trump's fault'… They spent a year pushing that. And now, if you say, ‘Well, the president is supposed to be able to handle Covid with the wave of a wand.’ Now they can't-"
"They can't say that. They have to have the outgroup," Duncan chimed in before invoking Biden blaming the Delta variant on the poor August jobs report.
"And he says like, 'The buck stops here folks.' Apparently not!" Smug quipped.
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