Stupid people demand the right to be heard

In a bizarre twist a bunch of wingnuts are taking various news organisations to court because they are collaborating to boycott the disinformation and drivel that the wingnut consortium are promoting.

In late 2020 the BBC established the Trusted News Initiative in an attempt to counter the the flood of drivel being pumped out by various clueless individuals. Much of this is anti-vaccination and Covid denial content of various sorts. Various organisations joined this initiative to notify each other of relevant material and posts being circulated on social media. Members of the initiative include The Washington Post, the BBC, the Associated Press, and Reuters.

Over a 2 month period it was found that about 65% of anti-vaccine content can be traced to a few leading online anti-vaxxers. These have been referred to as the Disinformation Dozen. These include Joseph Mercola, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Sherri Tenpenny, Ty and Charlene Bollinger, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, one of the most prominent anti-vaxxers, joined 10 other plaintiffs in a complaint that claims that the news outlets are illegally boycotting right-wing conspiracy theories by conspiring in an industry partnership to fight misinformation. The basis of their complaint is the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. This law prohibits industry cartels, price fixing, and other anti-competitive behaviour. The intended and main uses of this law has been in commerce where business practices have worked against consumer interests. Theoretically if the disinformation ‘industry’ can establish that they have lost income as a result of their drivel being suppressed then there might be a case. Do stupid, or cynical, people have a right to monetise their illogical and antiy-intellectual nonsense?

It is not our purpose to tell you what to think, however if you think vaccines are an evil tool of government control and are part of the globally reset, or that the Covid pandemic was a hoax then please contact us about some unicorns we have for sale.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr – getting it wrong since 2005
Kennedy became prominent as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist partly due to his 2005 Rolling Stone article “Deadly Immunity”. This falsely asserted a link between childhood vaccines and autism. This was based on the fraudulent paper in The Lancet by Andrew Wakefield. This work has been repeatedly by mulitple studies that have debunked any claims of a link between vaccinations and autism. Rolling Stone retracted the Kennedy article in 2011.

Andrew Wakefield has published several dodgy papers incuding one suggesting a link between the measles vaccine and Crohn’s disease. Work by other teams failed to support this hypothesis. Similarly after his limited study and paper that suggested a link between MMR vaccine and autism he was asked to confirm the results with a properly designed controlled study, which he refused to do so. Subsequent investigations of his work led to him being struck off for fraud. More on Andrew Wakefield

Photo credit Gage Skidmore

How entertaining was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

Average rating 0 / 5. Vote count: 0

No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

×
You have free article(s) remaining. Subscribe for unlimited access. The limit is 5 free pages every 28 days.
Mastodon