When a local news channel in Oklahoma ran a false story about gunshot victims getting turned away because so many locals had overdosed on ivermectin, it’s no wonder liberal partisans fell for it. It confirmed all of their biases.
But it’s hard to imagine why newsrooms fell for it and ran their story. A few critics have pointed out how basic reporting, making about two phone calls, would have undermined the whole story. Critics of the critics have said it was a simple error or sloppiness or the inevitable result of hollowed-out newsrooms, but it’s certainly not an example of media bias.
It is bias, of course, driven by the ideology and class of the newsroom writers and editors. One simple way to tell was that many conservatives instantly sniffed out the story as BS, while editors and writers acted like gullible online lefties.
Here was my tweet when I saw the story:
There were fewer than 500 calls to poison control in the entire nation for ivermectin in all of August. This story smells like bullshit. https://t.co/r9HlOjlGL0
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) September 4, 2021
And I was just reacting to the lead and the headline of the Rolling Stone story. Anyone who absorbed the whole KFOR piece or the Rolling Stone piece would have instantly heard BS alarms in his or her head — unless he or she was drowned out by confirmation bias.
Here are five small points that involved no phone calls and should have made everyone doubt the story.
- Nationwide, there were fewer than 500 calls to poison control in a month. How could this be a crisis that overwhelms hospitals?
The American Association of Poison Control Centers publishes bulletins, and its August bulletin on ivermectin said there were 459 ivermectin calls nationwide in August. Unless all 459 cases were in one part of Oklahoma, there’s no way this was enough of a plague to “overwhelm” multiple hospitals.
- Do you think there are long lines of gunshot victims in Oklahoma?
There are about five or six people shot per day in the entire state of Oklahoma. That’s not great, but neither does that make likely a backup of gunshot victims at rural hospitals.
- Do you think gunshot victims get turned away by crowded hospitals in large numbers?
Really?
And for the dozens of grown-ups who tweeted out that Rolling Stone article as if it were credible, two more red flags:
- The picture illustrating the long lines outside of emergency rooms was from the winter, as evident by the people in jackets.
- This was in Rolling Stone.
