CBS used the war to explain away longstanding issues such as rising gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain problems.
Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we recap the media’s shortcomings in covering the war in Ukraine, HuffPost’s dramatic framing of the Texas governor’s recent directive on gender transitions, and hit more media misses.
Media Lose Focus on the Tragedy Unfolding in Ukraine
While many Western journalists are selflessly risking their safety to cover the war unfolding in Ukraine, the conflict has brought out the worst in many reporters and pundits operating from the U.S.
The View co-host Joy Behar was widely panned last week for whining about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine had thwarted her vacation plans.
“I’m scared of what’s going to happen in Western Europe too,” Behar said during a discussion on the show about what the invasion means for the rest of the world. “You know, you just plan a trip. You want to go there, want to go to Italy for four years, and I haven’t been able to make it because of the pandemic, and now this.”
Meanwhile, CBS News took the conflict — in which 352 Ukrainian civilians had died, as of Sunday — as an opportunity to explain away rising gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues that have already impacted Americans for months now.
“The U.S. economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues due to the Ukraine crisis,” CBS wrote in a tweet sharing an article that explored potential fallout from the invasion.
The U.S. economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues due to the Ukraine crisis. https://t.co/d9dwXWpcvf
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 23, 2022
And in a time of rampant disinformation, several American and Australian journalists appeared to have fallen for a hoax involving an alleged group of Proud Boys who claimed to be traveling to Eastern Europe to fight on Russia’s behalf, according to the Post Millennial.
New York Times tech reporter @sheeraf, @abcnews‘ @maxwalden_ & @GuardianAus‘s @vanbadham were among the journalists who helped spread the hoax that Proud Boys had sent a fighting unit to meet Putin and help Russia fight in #Ukraine. https://t.co/OzNXZdCaPO pic.twitter.com/G0dLdhgVzZ
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) February 27, 2022
A Twitter account called “Proud Boys Southern Tablelands” tweeted a video on Friday captioned, “We have lift off! See you when we return Australia. Brothers staying behind look after this great nation. We will return with great gifts for all! #Ukraine #bridewive.”
However, the accompanying clip was taken from a video posted by a YouTuber in 2018. The account claimed that the group was sending a group of “8 of their best on a flight from Sydney to Poland 1610 tomorrow.”
“We will be rendezvousing with our Brothers from Proud Boys chapters all over the world and be making our way by foot to Ukraine to help Vlad. Pray for us. Uhuru!”
According to the report, Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Max Walden and Patricia Karvelas were both duped by the fake video, as was New York Times tech reporter Sheera Frenkel, Guardian writer Van Badham, and MSNBC contributor Malcolm Nance.
Frenkel later said she was phrasing her reporting “carefully” because she had not been able to independently verify the locations of a number of Proud Boys who claimed to be in Ukraine.
.@nytimes tech reporter @sheeraf tries to substantiate her reporting that Proud Boys may be sending operational assets (fighters) to go to Ukraine based on their Telegram posts. Just read them: pic.twitter.com/aoNFxzjsIs
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) February 26, 2022
Others seem eager to be used as propagandizing puppets of Vladimir Putin. Chronicles Magazine associate editor Pedro Gonzalez, for example, proposes that the “vast majority” of misinformation related to the war in Ukraine can be attributed to the Ukrainians rather than the Russians.
Notably, the vast majority of the misinfo was on the Ukrainian side. Russia has been more or less dark — there is no Russian “Snake Island”–some have argued that it seems as if they knew they wouldn’t be able to compete, so they relied on hard power instead of meme power
— Pedro L. Gonzalez (@emeriticus) February 28, 2022
As evidence, he cites the stand at Snake Island — which the Ukrainian government corrected once it was revealed that the border guards involved were captured rather than killed. Gonzalez neglects to mention that the Russian invasion is predicated upon a supposed genocide being conducted in the Donbas region of Ukraine, a genocide that every major world government besides Russia’s says is not occurring.
Headline Fail of the Week
This week’s dishonor goes to HuffPost for its grossly titled article, “Texas Governor Directs State Agency to Investigate Kids’ Genitals.”
The article, which was later retitled to read, “Texas Governor Directs State Agency To Investigate Trans Therapy As ‘Child Abuse,’” refers to Governor Greg Abbott’s order directing the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate doctors and parents who enable a child’s gender-transition surgery.
Abbott’s direction came after DFPS confirmed in August that gender-transition surgery on children constitutes child abuse when Abbott asked the department to issue a determination on the matter. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton also said last week that gender-transition procedures, including hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and sex-reassignment procedures, are abuse under existing Texas law.
Meanwhile, HuffPost took the directive as an opportunity to blast the governor: “The purported small-government Republican on Tuesday instructed the state’s child welfare agency to conduct a ‘prompt and thorough’ investigation into ‘sex change’ procedures’ for minors in the state, the latest in a right-wing frenzy about transgender children.”
Yet the governor issued a reasonable order explaining that Paxton’s opinion “makes clear, it is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”
Media Misses
• The Atlantic’s David Frum has an idea for those who are wondering how to help in Ukraine’s moment of need: Stump for American politicians!
You may wonder, “what can I as an everyday citizen do to help?”
There is something.
Putin’s war will raise, is raising, the cost of fuel and food. Be ready to explain that to friends and neighbors when Putin-friendly talkers and politicians try to blame our elected leaders
— David Frum (@davidfrum) February 24, 2022
• The Associated Press deleted a tweet last week advertising an NFT drop featuring video of migrants drifting in an overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean after facing backlash online. The AP explained its decision in another tweet: “We deleted an earlier tweet promoting an upcoming NFT auction. This was a poor choice of imagery for an NFT. It has not and will not be put up for auction.”
— Allie Goulding (@alliejgoulding) February 24, 2022
• New York Magazine’s Intelligencer published an article last week suggesting that Republicans support parents’ rights in education only because they view parents as “household tyrants” over children.
The commentary by senior writer Sarah Jones came in a piece about Florida Republicans’ proposed education laws.
“The right’s real ambition isn’t restoration, though, but expansion; they want to create new rights on top of the privileges parents already enjoy. In the party’s view, parental rights both supersede and exist in conflict with the rights of the child. The right insists that what’s good for parents is good for kids,” the piece says. “This is not necessarily the truth, as any queer person can say in return. The idea that children are already people, with thoughts and needs independent of their parents, never factors into the party’s position at all.”
The article adds: “As Republicans long for a strong figure in power, they imagine the same figure in every home. Subject of a household tyrant, the child has no freedom.”