Skepticism and misinformation

“Wow!” Trump said on social media. “In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else. This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”

Members of the press responded to the former president’s allegation with skepticism. Rightly so! The former president has a rocky relationship with the truth, to put it as politely as possible. And at any rate, journalists should be skeptical of all unverified claims, always.

However, certain members of the press took the skepticism a step too far, deciding once again to parrot uncritically counterstatements issued by sources within the federal government.

“According to a DOJ official,” CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell reported, “the FBI is NOT in possession of former President Trump’s passports. Trump had accused the FBI of stealing his three passports during the search of his Mar-a-Lago home.”

As of this writing, O’Donnell’s tweet, which is still live, has been shared by more than 10,000 social media users. It has also been “liked” by more than 42,500 users.

A more cautious journalist would’ve spotted the problem immediately with the anonymous source’s statement. Note that the source didn’t say, “The FBI did not seize his passports.” The anonymous source didn’t give a simple, clear-cut denial. Rather, the source said only the FBI is not in possession of Trump’s passports at this moment.

Whether the federal government is currently in possession of the passports isn’t the question. The question is: Did the FBI seize passports belonging to a former president? In other words, the anonymous source’s statement itself deserves skepticism, it being so vague and noncommittal. But O’Donnell didn’t apply the same skepticism she and so many of her colleagues applied to the president’s initial claim. She merely repeated what an anonymous Justice Department source told her.

As it turns out, the FBI did, in fact, seize Trump’s passports. It returned them later.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich responded to O’Donnell directly, sharing on social media an email from the Justice Department’s National Security Division acknowledging the FBI had taken several passports from Mar-a-Lago.

“We have learned that the filter agents seized three passports belonging to President Trump, two expired and one being his active diplomatic passport,” the email announced, adding that the bureau was in the process of “returning” the removed materials.

“Did your ‘source’ read you this email?” Budowich asked O’Donnell on social media. “Did you bother asking if they indeed seized the passports?”

The bureau itself announced in a separate statement sidestepping the central issue, “In executing search warrants, the FBI follows search and seizure procedures ordered by courts, then returns items that do not need to be retained for law enforcement purposes.”

O’Donnell followed up her original anonymously sourced reporting eventually, saying, “We are also learning tonight that if any items not contained in the warrant were retrieved during the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, they will be returned.”

She would’ve done well to secure the follow-up information first, reporting it before the weasel statement from her anonymous source at the Justice Department.

This isn’t to beat up on O’Donnell. Rather, this is to draw attention once again to the disturbing and dangerous trend of corporate journalists repeating anonymously sourced information, provided by members of the federal justice and intelligence communities, as statements of fact.

Stop blindly trusting these people! They will lie to you just as easily as they breathe. Stop uncritically parroting their talking points, especially if they feed you a line that very conspicuously avoids answering the question at hand.

As always: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Disinformation

The disinformation is coming from inside the house!

So-called disinformation reporters have reignited their fatwa against Libs of TikTok, a right-wing social media account that shares videos and literature documenting progressivism’s most controversial and extreme positions.

Most recently, the account shared a now-deleted video uploaded originally to social media by Boston Children’s Hospital. The video, which, again, was publicly available for anyone to watch and notice, featured hospital staff boasting of their “gender-affirming” services, which extend even to minors.

The video included text that reads, “We will see patients as young as fifteen for top surgeries.” A Boston Children’s Hospital employee also said in reference to genital surgery, “We really start at age 18, 17 for very few.”

The hospital’s application forms state boys seeking vaginoplasty surgery must be at least 17 years old and that girls seeking “chest reconstruction” must be at least 15 years old and have parental consent. The hospital also makes puberty blockers available to minors.

Moreover, according to the Journal of Clinical Medicine, “The Center for Gender Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital was the first pediatric center in the United States to offer gender-affirming chest surgeries for individuals over 15 years old and genital surgeries for those over 17 years of age. In the four years since its inception, [Center for Gender Surgery] has completed over 300 gender-affirming surgeries.”

The same report said of Boston Children’s Hospital’s gender surgeries, “Over the 3-year study period, a total of 204 gender affirmation surgical cases were identified: 177 chest/top and 27 genital/bottom surgeries. Most cases were masculinizing chest reconstructions 177/204 (86.8%) with 65/177 (36.7%) of those patients being less than 18 years of age.”

In layman’s terms, the hospital performed 65 double mastectomies on minors between the years 2017 and 2020.

Those who follow accounts such as Libs of TikTok were not happy to discover that a major U.S. hospital performs a wide array of irreversible gender surgeries on minors. They were even less happy to discover that the same hospital makes genital surgery available to patients as young as 17, even if it is “for very few.” Widespread criticism of the hospital soon followed.

As a result, disinformation reporters are very, very upset — not at the hospital, of course. They’re upset that right-wing social media accounts took notice of the Boston hospital’s publicly available videos, broadcasting them to a broader, less receptive audience.

NBC News, for example, published a report blaming Libs of TikTok for threats and harassment hospital staff have reportedly received following the negative publicity their now-deleted videos garnered.

“Boston Children’s Hospital warns employees over far-right online harassment campaign,” the headline claimed. Its subhead reads, “The hospital became the target in recent weeks of activists who made a variety of false claims about medical treatment provided to young transgender people.”

The report is careful to accuse Libs of TikTok of leveling false accusations at the hospital.

“Boston Children’s Hospital first became the target of activists in recent weeks,” the report reads, “when well-followed social media accounts such as LibsofTikTok … began to make a variety of false claims.”

It adds, “One allegation said that the hospital offered gender-affirming hysterectomies to children under 18 years old.”

It’s true: The hospital did not perform genital surgeries between the years 2017 and 2020. Still, however, it is hospital policy to offer such procedures to those 17 years and older. Curiously, this detail is missing from NBC’s write-up. In fact, the article makes no mention whatsoever of the age specifications for vaginoplasty and “chest reconstruction” surgeries. It must’ve slipped their minds over there in the “disinformation” department.

Other “disinformation” reporters got in on the game, demanding social media sites do something about right-wing accounts publicizing the hospital’s then-publicly available videos.

As a result, Libs of TikTok was suspended temporarily from Facebook.

“Facebook has nuked LibsOfTikTok after their recent campaign against children’s hospitals that treat trans people,” NBC News’s Ben Collins bragged after his and his colleagues’ none-too-subtle campaign to silence the hospital’s critics appeared to have succeeded.

To be clear, the hospital wasn’t criticized simply for offering gender and genital surgeries. It became the target of criticism and complaint because it makes these services available to minors. NBC and others can pretend this isn’t the case, but the hospital’s own materials say otherwise.

The “disinformation” complaint quite literally boils down to: “How dare these right-wingers notice these disturbing, publicly available videos? How dare they criticize this hospital for performing these controversial, irreversible surgeries?” The disinformation reporters then added to their complaint by falsely accusing the hospital’s critics of falsely accusing the hospital of performing certain “gender-affirming” surgeries on minors. And the press’s campaign of disinformation has already succeeded in some ways. (Note that Collins acts as if the Facebook suspension was something that just happened and not the direct result of complaints and bad reporting produced by places such as NBC.)

It’s all just another case of disinformation reporters taking their job titles literally.

Becket Adams is the program director of the National Journalism Center.