"Watters' World" host Jesse Watters slammed the liberal media and Dr. Anthony Fauci on Saturday for pushing various "lies" throughout 2020.
JESSE WATTERS: Did you ever date somebody for a while, and after you break up, you realize the whole relationship was fake? Everything she told you was bull? All your big moments were meaningless? That's 2020. We got catfished last year. All the lies were designed to install Biden. The media actually broke itself dragging Joe across the finish line. The press died from all the lies. That's one of the side-effects of Trump derangement syndrome. Now that Biden's been installed, the truth is finally coming out. It has a way of doing that. And it's stunning.
The doctor now under fire for lying about funding the Wuhan lab. Fauci rallied scientists to dismiss the lab leak theory while he was scrambling behind the scenes to wipe his fingerprints from it. But dont you dare criticize Fauciwho was wrong on masks, gain of function, lockdowns, and Hydroxychloroquine. He doesnt take criticism well.
This is what liberals do when they face fair criticism. They assume a grand identity that cant be attacked. This is an attack on women, this is an attack on Blacks, this is an attack on the media, an attack on science. No, no-no. Its not an attackits a criticism of just you. Deal with it like a man
The astonishing thing about all of this is that the media will confess their sins. Deep down theyre ashamed of their dishonestyonly a sociopath wouldnt be.
As we sift through the lab-leak debacle, the good news is that the healthy antibodies in the system are still strong enough to overcome the groupthink that produced the original error. News media are investigating a hypothesis they once dismissed, and the government has announced an investigation to find the truth.
The bad news is that the problem is turning out to be worse than it initially seemed and worse still, the source of the failure is not going away. The implications of this episode are much broader than understanding the source of the pandemic. It is a question about whether institutions like the media and government can withstand the pressure of ideological conformity.
A recent Washington Post story, looking back at the governments response to viruss origination, reported that many officials refused to explore the lab-leak hypothesis because it was associated with right-wing politics. For some of the officials who were privately suspicious of the Wuhan lab, Trumps and Navarros comments turned the lab-leak scenario into a fringe conspiracy theory, the Post found, It became nearly impossible to generate interest among health experts in a hypothesis that Trump had turned into a political weapon, they said.
That is an extraordinarily damning admission. Health experts who understood all along that it was entirely possible that the virus emerged from a lab simply refused to examine the hypothesis because it had become associated with the likes of Donald Trump.
Katherine Eban, writing in Vanity Fair, has written a lengthy expos drawing out the failure in detail. One State Department officialwrote that his team was warned not to investigate the origins of the pandemic because it would open a can of worms. Miles Yu, the State Departments principal China strategist, tells Eban, Anyone who dares speak out would be ostracized. After former CDC head Robert Redfield said he believed the virus originated in a lab, he tells Eban I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis.
In retrospect, the error is clear enough all along. The origins of the pandemic were always murky, and the strongest reason to dismiss lab-leak out of hand that the Wuhan lab supposedly had airtight security protocols was more rumor than fact. Whats more, the notion that the theory was racist was always transparently dubious. A story in which the virus emerged from failed safety protocols at the Wuhan lab is not inherently more racist than a theory in which it emerged from a wet market. (If anything, blaming the pandemic on Chinas people for eating bats lends itself much more easily to racism than blaming Chinas government for lax security at its research labs.)
Journalists make mistakes, especially operating in a chaotic atmosphere dominated by the ceaseless jabberings of a pathological liar with a giant megaphone. Whats concerning is that, even faced with undeniable proof of the error, many people still refuse to concede it.
An article in Nature warns against a a divisive investigation into the viruss origins. Remarkably enough, given that it comes from a scientific journal, the article does not directly question the possibility that COVID did escape from a lab. Instead, it warns that the investigation is fueling online bullying of scientists and anti-Asian harassment in the United States, as well as offending researchers and authorities in China whose cooperation is needed. One scientist who reports this bullying is Canadian virologist Angela Rasmussen, who in 2020 had developed a high-profile Twitter presence laced with confident dismissals of lab-leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory that was steeped in racist stereotypes.
When scientists are openly arguing against the study of a scientific hypothesis, for non-scientific reasons, something has gone haywire. In this case, that something seems to be a hothouse atmosphere centered around social media, that has cultivated an ethos of moral fervor and political homogeneity.
Personally I think that when a public figure is a known racist liar its fine to treat their evidence-free statements as racist lies, insisted podcaster Michael Hobbes. If David Duke gives a speech about rising urban crime rates its not the medias job to report the most plausible version of his argument. Writer and University of Minnesota Law School fellow Will Stancil called renewed attention to the lab-leak hypothesis the latest example of hybridization between the right-wing fever swamps and the white guys who run journalism.
The notable aspect of these statements is not the conclusion but the logic that produced it. That journalists dismissed a plausible theory, because they associated it with people who have noxious beliefs, does not strike them as a problem, but a correct epistemological model.
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Jonathan Last, an apostate conservative writing for the Bulwark (a new magazine that serves as a kind of refuge for Republican and conservative intellectuals unable to stomach Donald Trump), recently made an observation about conservatives taunting the mainstream media for dismissing the lab-leak hypothesis. Yes, Last allowed, many outlets got the story wrong by describing the hypothesis that COVID-19 escaped from the lab in Wuhan, rather than the nearby wet market, as a false, racist conspiracy theory, when in truth they never really knew the viruss origins. But most of those outlets have since corrected their error and treated the issue as a live scientific mystery. When has conservative media ever engaged in anything like this sort of self-correction? Is Fox News running self-flagellating segments questioning, say, the networks promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a proven COVID treatment? The very thought is a punchline.
This asymmetry between the mainstream news media and the conservative media that was created to oppose it has long been a source of satisfaction for we liberals. Modern journalism, like think tanks and the bureaucracy, grew out of a Progressive Era belief in disinterested expertise. Guided by the principles of scientific inquiry, these institutions would follow the truth wherever it led.
The conservative movement built a counter-Establishment to oppose this network, but the alt-institutions of the right mimicked the hallowed liberal Establishment only in form. The Heritage Institution, the Washington Times, and Fox News were not mirror images of Brookings, the New York Times, and CBS News they were parodies of them. Liberals had a phrase to describe this imbalance: the hack gap. The Republican Party had an army of partisans at its disposal, unburdened by any fealty to any scientific or professional norms save the advancement of the conservative movement. The liberal media might make mistakes, and bureaucracies may produce wrong conclusions, but at least they aspire to norms of fairness and impartiality that the right-wing counterparts merely sneer at.
Openness to evidence is the historical strength of American liberalism. This is why, for all the errors liberals have committed since the Progressive Era, a capacity for self-correction has given continued vitality to their our creed. The lab-leak fiasco ought to be a warning sign of what happens if the urge to not be defeated or manipulated by the right turns into an emulation of its methods. The only thing worse than having a hack gap would be not having one.
Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.
A new study from researchers at Ohio State University suggests American conservatives are more likely than liberals to fall for political misinformation that circulates on social media.
The driving force? False information skews to favor Republicans, and the confirmation bias we all experience makes them more inclined to believe it.
The studypublished this week andauthored by Ohio State professors Kelly Garrett and Robert Bond found conservatives were more prone to accept falsehoods, less inclined to believe true statements and less able totell the difference between truth and lies.
For example, 41% of Republicans believed thefalse claim that Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia and sold partof the U.S. uranium supply in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. Just 2% of Democrats said it was true.
Researchers distilled both true and false claims from viral news stories on social media and asked around 1,200 participants to assess them. Sources included major news networks, partisan news sources and satirical news sites such as The Onion and The Babylon Bee.
The survey took place over six months in 2019, meaning it predated the onslaught of misinformation peddled by politicians and social media users during the 2020 election cycle.
"Holding accurate political knowledge is fundamental to democracy, and ideological differences in citizens understanding of empirical evidence about politically important topics are potentially destabilizing to democracy itself," the authors wrote. "Effective decision-making depends on having a common understanding of the reality to which citizens and lawmakers must collectively respond."
Separately, groups of five Republicans and five Democratsrecruited online classified the 240 statements used in the studyas being better for one party or neutral. Of those, about 45% of the false claims were considered to benefit Republicans while 23% benefited Democrats.
One false statement that favored Republicans said British protesters were stockpiling human urine and plannedto douse former President Donald Trump with it during hisvisit to the U.K. A false statement that a Georgianew abortion bill requiredan investigation of any woman who miscarries was seen as benefiting Democrats.
Meanwhile, the majority of true claims 65% were seen as benefiting Democrats compared to just 10% benefiting Republicans.
Read the full study:Conservatives susceptibility to political misperceptions
Garrett said the study doesn't necessarily prove that conservatives are more biased than liberals, because all participants believed statements that boosted their political party and rejected those that didn't. But claims that benefitedRepublicans were more likely to be false, while true statements frequently furthered Democratic interests.
Thisputs conservatives at a disadvantage because they're ultimately exposed to more misinformation, Garrett said, and confirmation bias makes them more inclined to buy what they see. It's not clear why false information is more favorable toRepublicans.
"Conservatives consistently poor performance in distinguishing truths from falsehoods appears to be largely explained by the fact that widely shared falsehoods were systematically more supportive of conservatives political positions," the authors wrote.
Garrett said it's important for news organizations to continue fact checking and encouraged people to think critically about the content they share on social media. The study also called on policymakers and technology companies to find ways to guard against misinformation.
Haley BeMilleris a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
AFTER THE sweet tea was poured but before the tomato soup arrived, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, Bill White lifted his shirt-tail to reveal the rubberised grip of a .38 revolver. Everyones got one these days, he says. Over lunch, he and two other residents of Buckhead, the wealthy northern section of Atlanta, swap stories: packs of cars blocking intersections for illegal street races, would-be thieves casing houses, neighbours too frightened to leave their homes. Lenox Square, an upscale mall, installed metal detectors after a spate of shootings. Mr White is head of fundraising for the Buckhead Exploratory Committeea group of residents who have organised to push for Buckheads independence from Atlanta, driven, he explains, by three factors: crime, crime and crime.
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As of May 16th, murders were up by 59% in Atlanta compared with the same period in 2020. Rapes, aggravated assaults and thefts from and of cars are also well above levels in 2020. Nor is this just an Atlanta problem. Nationally, the spike in murders that began in 2020according to data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, homicides in American cities rose by 33% from 2019 to 2020shows no sign of abating. This is a problem first, of course, for the people living in the neighbourhoods where much of this violence takes place. But it also poses a problem for advocates of criminal-justice reform, who made great strides in the 2010s, when violent crime was falling. Convincing people to back lighter sentences and decrease their reliance on police when murders are rising may prove more difficult.
The reasons why murder rates are on the rise nationally remain unclear. In fact criminologists are still debating why crime fell in the 1990s and 2000s. The pandemic closed schools and other institutions, leaving young people unoccupied and anxious. Police who might otherwise have been deployed to high-crime neighbourhoods or investigative duty were assigned to respond to protests. Gun sales soared, and many faced financial hardships and other stresses. But violent-crime rates were rising, albeit more slowly than over the past 14 months, even before the covid-19 epidemic began, beginning in 2014.
Whatever the reason, homicides can be sticky, says John Pfaff of Fordham University in New York. A shooting in March can lead to a subsequent shooting in July, when retaliation comes up. In other words, even if the pandemic is partly responsible for the homicide spike, any post-pandemic decline may well be gradual.
As a result, crime now has a political salience that it has not had in years. A poll released last month showed crime was the second-most-important issue (behind covid-19) for Democrats in New York, who will choose a mayoral candidate in a primary on June 22nd. Eric Adams, a former police officer who has recently defended the use of stop-and-frisk tactics and made public safety the centre of his campaign, leads in some polls. Jenny Durkan, Seattles mayor, has faced criticism from both the right and left over her handling of the citys police-free autonomous zone and tactics used by police against protesters; she will not seek another term. Chesa Boudin, San Franciscos district attorney, faces a recall campaign, driven by the perception that he is too soft on crime. Crime has become central in the race to succeed Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlantas mayor, who also unexpectedly declined to seek a second term.
But before she leaves office, she plans to hire another 250 police officers. Other cities have taken a similar approach. Minneapolis, where a majority of the city council voted last year to defund and disband the police department, will spend $6.4m to hire new officers. While president of Baltimores city council, Brandon Scott championed a measure to cut the police departments budget by $22.4m; since taking office last December as mayor, he has proposed increasing it by $28m. Oakland will soon restore most of the $29m it cut from the police budget last year.
Such reversals testify more to the political than the budgetary costs of criminal-justice reform. But that does not mean reform is doomed, or that all voters will reject all reform-minded candidates. Last month Tishaura Jones was elected mayor of St Louis on a platform that included reducing reliance on police and closing one of the citys prisons. In a primary race on May 18th, Larry Krasner, Philadelphias crusading district attorney, trounced his police-union-backed opponent. On that same day, Ed Gainey, running on a reformist platform, defeated Bill Peduto in a primary election. He is poised to become Pittsburghs first black mayor.
Still, blame-mongering for violence is an effective cudgel for conservative state-level politicians to wield against liberal cities. Brian Kemp, Georgias Republican governor, is making Atlanta crime central to his re-election campaignthe better to win back Trump-hesitant Republicans in the citys suburbs. Florida has passed a law that lets the governor and his cabinet reverse any changes to cities police budgets that they deem unwise. Other states have proposed (and Texas has passed) measures cutting off funds to cities that slash police budgets. Unlike states, which the Tenth Amendment protects against federal overreach, cities are subsidiary creations of the state, and have no legal shield against these sorts of pre-emptive measures.
Reformers will have to change how they pitch their ideas. They cannot simply make a moral case. The impetus that led conservative and liberal states alike to reduce their prison populations in recent years was largely to save money. And, as Mr Pfaff notes, homicides are up nationwide, so if rising violent-crime rates indict reform in liberal cities, they must also indict the status quo in more conservative areas that have not pursued reform.
The rise in violence just makes everything related to these debates over how to reform policing and how to deal with police violence more difficult, explains Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton University. Theres a knee-jerk response because weve been so reliant on police and prisons as the institutions we turn to to deal with violence. Faced with a choice between more and less policing, people frightened of violent crime will rarely choose less.
In fact the choice is not binary. Police play a crucial role in fighting crime and, in the near term, cities may require a more robust police presence than some reformers would like. They do not play the only role, however. A wealth of evidence exists that other institutionsanti-violence non-profits, drug-treatment programmes, summer jobs for young peoplealso help. Politicians who want to reduce violent crime in their cities and states should remember that, just as activists should remember that reform is a harder sell when people do not feel safe. Because, since murders usually rise in the summer, when people are out in the streets until late, safety is unlikely to return soon.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Reality bites"
The Australian Electoral Commission has approved the registration of the New Liberals as a political party, despite warnings from the Liberal party it would result in widespread voter confusion.
In a decision published on Thursday, the AEC assistant commissioner, Joanne Reid, found the new partys name was sufficiently distinct and not likely to cause confusion or imply a connection with the Liberal Party of Australia.
The Liberal party had accused the New Liberals of a cynical attempt to piggyback on its brand, and tabled Crosby Textor research claiming up to two-thirds of voters wrongly believed the parties were connected.
The New Liberals registration sets up the nightmare possibility for the Liberal party of a repeat of the 2013 election, when David Leyonhjelm was elected to the Senate from New South Wales. Leyonhjelm recorded a 7.19% swing to him after the Liberal Democrats ticket was placed further to the left on the ballot paper than the Liberal party.
The Liberal party federal director, Andrew Hirst, has told Guardian Australia the party is disappointed with the decision and intends to seek a review of it.
After internal review by a three-person panel in the AEC, the Liberal party can also seek a merits review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
In the decision, Reid said she was not in a position to judge the accuracy of a survey of 2,036 voters conducted by Michael Turner, the head of research at Crosby Textor, as the precise methodology was not specified.
Reid accepted the survey showed some of the participants in the research were confused or mistaken by the name The New Liberals and said she gave this evidence some weight.
Reid said the New Liberals application was much closer to the line than the earlier registration of the Liberal Democrats and Liberals for Forests.
But she found the new party name was sufficiently visually and aurally distinct from the Liberal Party of Australia, as they only shared the word Liberal and in the precedent case of Woollard the AAT had found that no political party can claim the exclusive right to generic words such as liberal.
Reid said the ordinary definition of the word new does have the connotation of representing something different.
Unlike New Labour, a rebranding of Labour in the UK, both the Liberal party and the New Liberals would appear on the same ballot making it very likely that a voter would have a choice between the two, she said.
The word liberal has a broad meaning and history. It is suggestive of a certain political philosophy.
It is not a word that is only associated with one particular party.
Based on the prevalence of the term liberal in politics and in relation to liberal thought, any perceived correlation between The New Liberals might be on the basis of their shared belief in liberalism.
Reid concluded a reasonable person would not think that a connection or relationship exists between the two parties.
The New Liberals was founded in 2019 by the Sydney barrister Victor Kline, who is also a founder and director of the Refugee Law Project. He is also the partys leader and a New South Wales lead Senate candidate.
The New Liberals say they are economically responsible and socially progressive and target the Liberals over failures on climate change and treatment of refugees.
Claiming the mantle of liberalism and providing inner-city voters with a non-Labor alternative to the Liberals has helped independents including Zali Steggall win previously blue-ribbon seats, efforts set to continue at the next election.
In April Kline told Guardian Australia the New Liberals aim to run candidates for the Senate in every state and up to three dozen urban seats held by Liberal MPs, preferencing independents such as the Voice movement first and the Liberals last.
On Thursday Kline said he and the party were absolutely thrilled with the registration decision. Although were not totally secure, our position is very strong, he said, commenting on the Liberal party challenge.
The New Liberals have announced 19 candidates so far, including lead Senate candidates in all states except Western Australia.