The 'scholars' are fake. The media doesn't care
You, too, can get the news to spout false statistics
To understand the media’s latest dangerous debacle, it helps to look at skydivers and a plumbing company. Yes, really.
First, the “news.” Most, if not all, of the biggest agencies have been shouting out an alleged “survey” from “leading scholars” and “experts” who, we are told to believe, have tapped into their great reservoirs of knowledge to conclude that Israel is carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza.
But this group is an obvious sham. Literally anyone can join for $30 (including “Adolf Hitler” in Gaza.) It’s filled with people who have no clue what they’re talking about. As soon as some people — not inside big news agencies, of course — looked into it, the group attempted to hide its membership.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of members did not even vote on the so-called “resolution.” One member has written publicly about what actually went on. (For more, see The Free Press.)
The “resolution” also includes lies. As the terrific Salo Aizenberg points out, it claimed that the International Court of Justice found it “plausible that Israel is committing genocide.” As you’ll hear in Episode 67, Joan Donoghue, former president of the ICJ, explained, “This is something where I'm correcting what's often said in the media. It didn't decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
Did any major news agencies point out any of this? Crickets. Instead, they used this claim to fuel the world’s most incendiary false accusation.
This kind of thing happens every day.
In events around the world, I’ve used this hypothetical example: You could call nine of your friends and tell them you’re creating an organization called “Humans for Facts.” Ask them whether they believe everyone should jump out of an airplane while chewing gum. However many say yes, put that in a news release as a percentage. So if 9 say yes, your headline should read, “90% of people believe…” The media will report it.
How can we know this? Because, sadly, the legacy media is filled with examples. Here’s one I discussed in Episode 28:
The Daily Beast said a “particularly jarring” study found that 30% of men admitted to doing housework badly on purpose because they knew their spouse would step in to fix it, and then do the task going forward. I knew that that's not true because of all the fact checking I had done. So I went digging.
This “report” was a book review. So I looked into the book. It had that claim in it, sourcing an article in the Telegraph. That article was one of many reports based on a news release from — I kid you not — a small plumbing company in England.
So I contacted the plumbing company. They put me in touch with an agency in the U.K. that they had hired to work on this. The agency had no information about it on their website. Someone there told me they had worked with a company in the United States to carry out some kind of survey. I contacted them. No one would say anything. No one had any information about it. As soon as they figured out who I am, they shut down and just didn't want to talk to me.
The ONLY way to get the media to stop this craziness is to affect the bottom line. It’s time to cancel those subscriptions. You can still access news for free.
Join me in showing the media that they stand corrected. Together, we can do this. 👊
Paid subscribers, send your feedback, questions, messages to be shared on the show and more. Thank you!
JL
P.S. My latest on Instagram:
