The Media Echo Chamber

The War on Cops

A story in USA Today last week asked if there has been an increase in shark attacks against people.  The paper went so far as to wonder if man-made global warming was to blame.

The topic sounds eerily familiar to the summer news cycle about two decades ago. In 2001, there were shark attack stories being thrust at the public at an astonishing rate. Shark attack stories were found throughout newspapers (here, here, here) and network and cable newscasts (here, here, here). Even Comedy Central’s The Daily Show tackled the topic.  The hyperventilating media seemingly had the public afraid of going to the beach, or otherwise taking steps to avoid a possible shark attack. 

The growing shark attack narrative was so pervasive that Time magazine named 2001 “Summer of the Shark” in the magazine’s July 30th edition. A great white shark was featured on the cover.

In reality, 2001 was a fairly typical year when it came to sharks biting people. The year ended with 55 shark attacks against people in the US. There were 54 the year before. Globally, the number fell from 85 to 76 from 2000 to 2001. Just an average year when it came to sharks attacking people.

The increasing number of shark attacks narrative appears to have been another case of one news outlet producing a story that lit the fuse causing an explosion of follow-on stories without enough journalists checking the facts.

Here is another reality. An individual is nearly 50 times more likely to die from being struck by lightning than by dying from a shark attack, and about 760 times more likely to die in a bicycle accident. And last year, an individual was about 55,000 times more likely to die from an opioid overdose than from an altercation with Jaws. Even snake bites and insect stings take more human life than do hungry sharks.

Yet, it is shark attacks that pique the imagination and garner headlines. Bee sting deaths do not.

This is not the first time a fake story has taken off like this. Fabricated stories getting prominent coverage have been happening for years, even decades.  The following is just a very small sample of false stories that gained widespread national and international attention.

War on Cops.

There was another sensational topic that keep the headline writers busy in 2015. It was the war on cops. Newspapers (here, here, here, here, here), bloggers (here) and cable news channels (here, here) went into overdrive in late 2015 warning America that police officers were under a growing attack from civilians like never before.  

Except it wasn’t true.

There was not only not a war on cops but gun-related attacks against officers had been trending downward for 40 years. Law enforcement data pointed this out.  The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and the Officer Down Memorial Page both track the details on all officer loss of life.

When the news industry peaked with its “war on cops” narrative in the fall of 2015, the year had been on track and eventually ended as the second safest year in more than 50 years when it came to firearms assaults on law enforcement. A total of 41 officers were killed in gun attacks. Just two years earlier, 2013 was the safest year since they had been keeping records with 34 deaths.  Of course, that was 34 deaths too many.

The most dangerous time for firearms-related officer attacks was the 1960s and 70s.  Since then numbers have fallen dramatically.

In contrast to attacking cops, the leading cause of law enforcement deaths annually rarely warrants a hyped-up news mention, let along garners headlines. Vehicle accidents are the leading cause of cop deaths in a typical year.  

Moreover, many vehicle deaths were likely avoidable. At the same time media reporting about the purported war on cops was in high gear, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported  42% of officers killed in car crashes over a 30-year period were due to officers not wearing seat belts.  

It's ironic that while many departments have run “click-it or ticket” campaigns aimed at increasing citizen seat belt use, the leading cause of death for their own officers was a failure to wear seat belts.

Jimmy’s World.

In the nation’s capital, Janet Cooke of the Washington Post wrote a powerful story about an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, DC. The article described a heartbreaking situation of a child living in horrible conditions and getting injected with heroin in an urban neighborhood notorious for drug dealing.

The Washington Post followed Cooke’s article with an editorial addressing “Jimmy’s World” and its “starkly revolting and heart-rending detail.” The editorial added, “So repugnant, depressing and foreign to most people is this morally corrupt ‘world’ of one child in the city.” The Post wanted its readers to know it had published one very special story.

The newspaper was so proud of Cooke’s work that assistant managing editor Bob Woodward of Watergate fame submitted it for consideration for a Pulitzer Prize. For his part, it’s worth noting that Woodward is no stranger to exaggerations, embellishments, misstatements, and complete fabrications, according to several people with detailed knowledge of his work in the Washington Post and in his books (here, here, here, here, here).

On April 13, 1981, Cooke’s story won the award. Enthusiastic about awarding the prize to the first black female journalist winner, the Pulitzer committee shifted Cooke’s entry to another category to make that happen.

After reading the story, Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry was concerned about the plight of the child. Barry said, “We’re going to try to find that 8-year-old heroin addict…An 8-year-old boy on heroin and his mother says it’s okay. Isn’t that incredible? I couldn’t believe it. We’re going to try to help the boy if we can find him.” Citing the promise to maintain confidentiality, the Post declined repeated requests by city officials to provide any helpful information to locate the child.

Officials at the Toledo Blade newspaper took keen interest in the story after the Pulitzer awards were announced. Cooke had worked at the paper before she was hired at the Washington Post. However, they noticed discrepancies between Cooke’s biography contained in the newspaper’s personnel files and the one accompanying the Pulitzer Prize announcement. According to the press announcement, Cooke graduated magna cum laude from Vassar College and earned a master’s degree from the University of Toledo. The folks at the Toledo Blade knew this to be untrue.

Telephone calls were made and, in short order, the truth became known. Not only had Cooke embellished her résumé, but she had fabricated the entire story about Jimmy. There was no boy. No family. No child heroin addict. It was all untrue.

The fraud perpetrated by Cooke was exacerbated by the Washington Post. Despite its slew of editors and claims of rigorous fact checking, the Post failed to properly fact-check such an explosive story, even when other reporters at the paper suspected there were serious flaws with Cooke’s work. Tellingly, the Post failed in the most basic task of confirming the résumé of its prospective hire.

Supermarket Scanner.

The other national “newspaper of record” has also long had challenges with fabricated content that’s gone viral. The most infamous was nine decades ago when the New York Times’s Moscow bureau chief and USSR apologist, Walter Duranty, lied to coverup the Holodomor genocide in the Ukraine that led to millions of deaths. Seventy years later, another New York Times star reporter, Jayson Blair, turned out dozens, perhaps hundreds, of fake stories even after the paper received repeated warnings, including from other Times reporters.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, the New York Times published a February 5, 1992 article editorializing that President George H.W. Bush “lived the cloistered life” and was not “a man in touch with the middle class.” That was bad enough, but it got worse.  The article claimed Bush was flummoxed by a supermarket scanner as a “look of wonder flickered across his face” while the scanner was automatically ringing-up purchases.

The event purportedly occurred at a National Grocers Association convention in Florida. However, the Houston Chronicle’s Gregg McDonald was the sole pool reporter present at Bush’s convention hall visit and his two-paragraph dispatch never reported the claimed check stand kerfuffle. Nor did McDonald mention that Bush was being shown a recently-developed scanner that had not yet been distributed to stores: it weighed groceries and read damaged bar codes.

The New York Times’ Andrew Rosenthal, who was not physically present at the encounter and was likely 1,100 miles away in New York, authored the fabricated story, which included the dateline “Orlando, Florida,” implying he was present. The paper’s notorious fabulist Jayson Blair claimed it was common practice for New York Timesreporters to fudge datelines giving readers the false impression they attended events they would write about when they were actually home or in the Times newsroom. Obviously, this is both dishonest and unethical. The New York Times rewarded Rosenthal by eventually promoting him to be editor of the editorial page.

An independent, eye-witness went on record stating the opposite: Bush understood the technology. There was no confusion. No out-of-touch moment. The Times report, which was picked up by hundreds of other outlets around the country, was completely untrue. Not only was the false story repeated ad nauseam, but it also inspired memes lampooning Bush as out of touch with the people. The Bush-bashing narrative that he was out of touch with the public was exploited by Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign. Three decades later, the New York Times repeated the debunked lie in Bush’s obituary.

Fire Extinguisher.

One of the New York Times more recent fake stories occurred just last year. Citing “two law enforcement officials,” the New York Times falsely reported Capitol Hill police officer Brian Sicknick was killed when the Capitol building was breached by protesters.

The Times claimed an alleged Trump supporter struck Sicknick in the head with a fire extinguisher leaving a “bloody gash” that led to him being “rushed to the hospital and [being] placed on life support.”  It is curious that despite thousands of cell phone cameras, 14,000 hours of surveillance video, and thousands of witnesses, not a single eyewitness account confirmed the New York Times story.

The Associated Press implied it independently confirmed the Times report with the two law enforcement officers.

In contrast to the Times’s account, Sicknick’s brother reported exchanging texts with him on the evening of January 6th, and despite having been “‘pepper-sprayed twice,’ … he was in good shape.” Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed at his desk the following day and died.

The following month, an autopsy confirmed Sicknick became ill at his desk and died of natural causes, and not in reaction to any chemicals or injuries sustained the day prior. That Sicknick died a day after the Capitol building was breached and not by a blow to the head from a fire extinguisher forced the Times to sheepishly admit its sources were not a pair of law enforcement officials - as the paper originally claimed - but were actually “officials close to the Capitol Hill police.” For the record, the Capitol Hill police report to House and Senate leadership. Draw your own conclusion which House or Senate leader or whose office staff might have given the New York Times the false report.

Obviously, the Associated Press never independently confirmed the story, as it led readers to believe. The AP fabrication would have never likely been discovered if the original story was accurate. But it wasn’t. This exposed the Associated Press fib.  The New York Times lied and the Associated Press swore to it, getting caught up in its own lie in the process.

Plastic Straws.

 In 2018, Ian Calderon was the Democratic Majority Leader in the California General Assembly when he introduced a bill that would make it a criminal offense for wait staff to offer a plastic straw to restaurant patrons without being asked. Servers could be slapped with up to a $1,000 fine or six months in the pokey. These harsh punishments were deleted during committee deliberations.

Calderon’s bill was the latest development in a craze sweeping progressive lawmakers. A plastic straw ban went into effect in Seattle the previous summer.  San Francisco was to follow suit in 2020. Jurisdictions were responding to hysterical reporting that plastic straws were being consumed, and littered, at an astonishing rate.

The usual suspect of liberal news outlets including the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, Time, NBC News, and others (here, here, here, here, here, here, here) were onboard the anti-straw bandwagon.  Hundreds of outlets reported that half-a-billion plastic straws were used daily in America.

Think about that number for a moment. Half-a-billion. The report that 500,000,000 straws were being used daily suggests every man, woman, and child and everyone else from newborns to the incarcerated to those on life support were using more than 1.5 straws per person per day. Perhaps 1/10th of that - 50 million straws a day – would seem rather high. But aside from this author and perhaps a few others, no one in newsrooms across America were skeptical at this astronomical 500 million straws a day figure. Perhaps because it fit so nicely into a favored narrative.

I tracked the origin of that figure. The 500 million straws per day statistic was traced back to a recycling company named Eco-Cycle.  And where did Eco-Cycle get that number? From Milo Cress. That’s not a what. That’s a who. And how did Milo Cress arrive at the number of 500 million straws used and tossed every single day? He had no data to back it up. An Eco-Cycle official told the author the number was a “guesstimate.” Oh, and one other thing.  Milo Cress was 9-years old when he guesstimated the 500 million figure. From the mouth of a 9-year old to the pages of America’s most prominent newspapers and broadcasted on cable news outlets. Sheesh.

Fabricated news stories are bad. Sometimes really, really bad. Worse are the news organizations that suspend all credulity and regurgitate fake stories even when a quick review suggests they are deeply flawed, or they fail to pass muster when applying the most basic newsgathering standards. Readers beware.

Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, and Parler at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.

His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).