This and a hundred other sources are reveling in Rolling Stone's embarrassment for running a story based on the report of a local TV station in Oklahoma. The report - local hospitals supposedly filled to overflowing with Ivermectin overdoses. It turned out to be entirely false, some local physician either trolling or conning a typically low-talent local TV news reporter.
Certainly, the local reporter should have checked the story with the local hospitals, so should whoever at Rolling Stone wrote the much-maligned piece. They didn't, which speaks volumes about the current state of journalism, and the depths to which it has fallen.
The local news guy or gal was lazy, or didn't know better. Considering what they're paid, you can't expect much more.
Rolling Stone, for all of its counterculture roots, has been around for 50+ years, is national media, and they do know better. Plus they screwed up by running the hoax UVA gang-rape story some 7 years ago, and you'd think they would be more careful.
Pretty clearly what happened was the story too neatly fit the narrative line RS was trying to sell. It agreed with what Dr. Fauci and the CDC were saying and appeared to point to the dangers of off-label approaches and ignorant views held by hicks in the sticks.
Why bother to check something so obviously true? Except it wasn't true at all. Those supposedly full hospitals had seen no such cases, much less an overflow.
Journalism schools should hammer home to their graduates that any story that totally confirms your biases needs to be checked and rechecked. Because you want to believe it, be extra certain you aren't being fooled or innocently misled.
National Review's Kevin Williamson pens wisdom about this story:
A note to our progressive friends: This is your version of Q-Anon — falling for obvious, ridiculous lies because you want to believe the worst about people you hate.
