Let Me Rewrite That For You: NY Times Misinforms Readers About RFK & Biden

It’s been a few years since I last did a “Let me rewrite that for you” post. This idea was first suggested by the brilliant press critic Dan Froomkin. Basically, when he finds a bit of journalistic malpractice, he rewrites it the way a good journalist would, to show why the original was so wrong. The last time I did it was about some misleading coverage of the documents released by Frances Haugen by The Washington Post.

This time, I’m going to focus on a NY Times article by Maggie Astor and Rebecca Davis O’Brien. They’re politics reporters, and that often means that they’re covering the politics and not the facts when it comes to the fundamental details of what they’re reporting on. And that’s a problem. It leads to typical “view from nowhere” reporting, where you report what people are saying but not whether or not what they’re saying is true. And in this election season (especially) there should be no place for that. Learn how to report the truth, not just what candidates are saying.

The article is about RFK Jr, the perpetual crank and conspiracy-peddling independent campaigner for President, whose own family has rightly called out his bullshit and dismissed his nonsense campaign.

The original headline that caught my eye was: “To R.F.K. Jr., It’s Biden, Not Trump, Who’s the Bigger Threat to Democracy.” It has since been changed to a slightly more contextually accurate: “Trump Denies Elections and Praises Rioters, but R.F.K. Jr. Says It’s Biden Who Threatens Democracy.”

But what struck me was the article’s explanation of why RFK thinks Biden is somehow “more dangerous to democracy” than Trump. RFK (wrongly) thinks the Biden administration worked with social media to “censor” him:

But according to the independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it is President Biden who poses the greater threat to American democracy — a view that Mr. Kennedy shares with Mr. Trump himself, and that democracy experts called “absurd” and “preposterous.”

Such a perspective is possible because Mr. Kennedy, who has founded his political career on promoting vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories about the government, sees the Biden administration’s efforts to curtail the spread of misinformation as a seminal issue of our time. Censorship, as he calls it, overpowers all other concerns about the political system.

Mr. Kennedy’s stance drew fresh scrutiny this week after he said in an interview on CNN, “President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent.” He repeated himself on Fox News on Tuesday, saying that a president like Mr. Biden was “a genuine threat to our democracy.”

So, yes, these three paragraphs acknowledge RFK’s propensity for conspiracy theories and do say “censorship, as he calls it.” But you know what the best way is to drive home to users that RFK is full of shit and spewing conspiracy theories? It’s to maybe debunk the core argument in the article, the extremely misleading conspiracy theory that President Biden “has used the federal agencies to censor political speech.”

Because it simply didn’t happen. And nowhere does the article ever make that clear. It’s “the view from nowhere.” RFK Jr. said this, and we’re just going to repeat it. Let the reader figure it out for themselves whether it’s actually true or not.

Again, I recognize that these are political reporters, but part of reporting is doing the actual research. Any actual research would show that this thing that RFK is claiming, this one piece of evidence that is central to his claim that Biden is “worse than Trump,” happens to be something that simply did not happen.

We’ve gone over this before. Any reporter at the NY Times has the resources to look this up. As the article notes, RFK Jr. was spewing conspiracy theories and anti-vax nonsense. Some of that violated the rules of various social media sites, and they took appropriate action under their own rules not having anything to do with any government official, which is very much protected activity. Much of this happened during the Trump administration.

Of course, RFK Jr. lost his shit each time this has happened. In 2020, he tried suing Facebook for suspending his anti-vax org from the site. 2020. Back when Trump (not Biden) was President. He claimed it was a 1st Amendment violation because Adam Schiff had publicly complained about anti-vax nonsense on Facebook while also complaining about Section 230. That case was laughed out of court.

He also tried a similar case against YouTube. And again, the case was laughed out of court. As the court said in that case:

Plaintiff has not shown that the government so “insinuated itself into a position of interdependence” with Google or that it “exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement” to Google that give rise to state action.

The court noted that even RFK admitted that he has no evidence “that the government coerced” social media platforms.

RFK also tried suing Elizabeth Warren. He claimed that she colluded with Amazon and Jeff Bezos to “modify algorithms” and hide his conspiracy theory-laden book about COVID-19. At least that time, he tried to sue a government official, rather than an internet site. But, no, the court easily rejected that one. Multiple times. Here’s the 9th Circuit pointing out that (again) RFK could show no actual impact from Warren sending an angry letter. Basically it sounds like Amazon just didn’t promote his book, because his book is nonsense.

With respect to Amazon, there is no evidence that the company changed its algorithms in response to Senator Warren’s letter, let alone that it felt compelled to do so. The plaintiffs point to the fact that, several weeks after receiving the letter, Amazon notified Chelsea Green Publishing that it would not advertise The Truth About COVID-19 even though it had promoted other Chelsea Green books in the past. This fact is unilluminating because no evidence suggests that Amazon ever advertised the plaintiffs’ book before receiving the letter. Absent such evidence, it is far more likely that Amazon’s decision not to advertise the plaintiffs’ book was a response to widespread concerns about the spread of COVID-19 misinformation rather than a response to Senator Warren’s letter.

As for the First Amendment claims:

We conclude that the plaintiffs have not raised a serious question as to whether Senator Warren’s letter constituted an unlawful threat in violation of the First Amendment. Her letter requested, but did not demand, that Amazon reevaluate its business practices regarding COVID-19 misinformation and report back any changes. The absence of a specific demand is unsurprising given that Senator Warren lacks direct regulatory authority over Amazon in this matter. There is no evidence that Amazon or any other bookseller perceived the letter as a threat, and the “potentially unlawful” language does not fundamentally alter the analysis because Senator Warren never stated or otherwise implied that there would be any adverse consequences if Amazon failed to comply with her request.

RFK Jr. filed three separate cases alleging First Amendment violations because Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon exercised editorial discretion he didn’t like (some of it during the Trump administration). Every court rejected the claim as ridiculous. The NY Times mentions none of that.

Then, as the very problematic Missouri v. Biden found some success through judge shopping, he tried to glom onto that case. First, very late in the game (i.e., just last Spring), he filed his own lawsuit against Biden using the same judge shopping process Missouri used to get the same judge. The complaint is basically a bunch of unproven nonsense. Then he tried to consolidate the case with the Missouri case that was already moving. So far that one’s on hold while we wait for the Supreme Court to rule in the Murthy case, which is the version of the Missouri case that reached the Supreme Court.

So, to summarize, RFK Jr. has filed at least four nonsense lawsuits (possibly more, but that’s all the free research the NY Times gets from me) pushing these theories that the government violated his First Amendment rights when private web companies decided that his harmful conspiracy theory nonsense might violate their rules. So far, no court has found such claims even remotely credible.

Then you have the Murthy case, which he hopes to combine his case with. As we’ve been noting the whole time, it’s based on a near total misreading and misrepresentation of what actually happened. It takes strands of public statements by public officials, combined with communications for other purposes, and assumes that it’s found some smoking gun of the government “directing,” social media to pull down content, despite no evidence that it ever actually happened. At all.

Every example shown involved plaintiffs and/or judges taking quotes entirely out of context and misrepresenting what it actually said. In some cases, the quotes were fabricated by adding in or removing words to change their meaning.

Both Democrat and Republican appointed Supreme Court Justices expressed widespread skepticism about the case when it was heard, with multiple Justices (again, across the spectrum) calling out fundamental false claims by the states.

In other words, there is zero evidence to support the claim. None. Zero. RFK is delusional or he’s just making shit up when he claims that “President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent.”

And if you’re the NY Times, you have to call that out.

You don’t get to “he said/she said” your way through this. Yet that’s what these reporters do. While they note the Supreme Court’s skepticism, that’s as far as they go with it:

Mr. Kennedy has long said that the government’s engagement with media companies and tech platforms — to prevent the spread of disinformation or illegal materials or, in Mr. Kennedy’s case, the arguments he and his allies made against vaccines — amounts to illegal censorship, an argument that was met with skepticism at the Supreme Court last month.

Again, a perfect opportunity to point out that none of it happened. Or to point to the failed lawsuits. But, nope.

So, NY Times, let me rewrite that for you:

For years, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been pushing unfounded and unsupported misinformation and conspiracy theories against the government. He continued that tradition in arguing that the Biden administration is a bigger threat to democracy than the Trump administration. This is based on unsupported claims that have been rejected by multiple courts, regarding how his own words have faced moderation from private social media companies.

Mr. Kennedy has filed multiple lawsuits alleging that the government has sought to suppress his words, all of which have failed to gain traction. In each case, the companies themselves have indicated that they made their own decisions regarding Mr. Kennedy’s accounts, which have frequently violated their rules, and were treated accordingly.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has a proven track record of election denial. This includes filing dozens of lawsuits to stop a fairly conducted election, followed by an unconstitutional attempt to prevent the 2020 election results from being counted. This also includes encouraging his fans to storm the Capitol to prevent the election from concluding.

Mr. Kennedy’s claims appear as fanciful as his theories on various aspects of medicine and health.

But, of course, the NY Times would never print something like that. They’d rather make sure their pages are open to Republican Senators pushing for the use of the US military on people protesting the police murdering a black man.

All the news that’s fit to print, but not enough room for the simple truth.