Just when you think you have found the bottom to the media’s penchant for reckless, biased reporting, they come along to show you just how wrong you are.
NBC News reported this week that an Arizona man had died “after ingesting chloroquine in an attempt to prevent coronavirus.” The man’s wife, who is in an intensive care unit after she also ingested the substance, says they got the idea from watching President Trump’s COVID-19 White House press briefings, including the one where the chief executive mentioned that researchers were exploring whether “chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine” could be used to develop a cure for the virus.
“My advice,” the woman told NBC News in an interview from her hospital bed, is “don’t believe anything that the president says and his people because they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
She continued, imploring her interviewer to “educate the people!”
From reading the headline pushed by NBC News and similar ones published by nearly every news outlet that has picked up the woman’s story, one comes away with the distinct impression that the president caused the man’s death. After all, had the couple not been led astray by Trump’s reckless comments, they would still be together today, right?
Well, maybe not. Missing from the news headlines about this Arizona tragedy is an important and relevant fact. The couple did not in fact ingest the “common malaria drug” Trump had referred to. Rather, they drank an industrial chemical used to treat sick fish because they saw “chloroquine phosphate” listed among the ingredients and thought it was basically the same thing.
So to reiterate, the substance they ingested was not the drug Trump referenced, but rather a chemical “listed on a parasite treatment for fish.”
So now, Trump apparently needs to clarify that people should not drink poison.
The NBC News report recounts what happened in Arizona:
“I saw it sitting on the back shelf and thought, ‘Hey, isn’t that the stuff they’re talking about on TV?'”
The couple — both in their 60s and potentially at higher risk for complications of the virus — decided to mix a small amount of the substance with a liquid and drink it as a way to prevent the coronavirus.
In other words, the couple drank a toxic chemical because it sounded sort of like something Trump had talked about at one of his press briefings. I am sorry for the woman’s loss, but I am skeptical that you can pin this one on Trump.
But then, try telling that to the reporters and editors who have published dozens of misleading headlines and viral tweets suggesting that Trump caused the older couple’s tragedy. NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard, who co-authored the NBC report, went viral with a tweet that reads:
NBC: “What would be your message to the American public?”
Woman: “Oh my God. Don’t take anything. Don’t believe anything. Don’t believe anything that the President says & his people…call your doctor.”
As of this writing, Hillyard’s tweet, which casually omits that the Arizona couple drank toxic fish medicine, has been shared by more than 14,000 social media users.
The obviously important detail about the couple drinking a poison because it sounded like something the president mentioned on television is similarly buried in the many news stories that have been published since NBC News went live with its “exclusive.”
“An Arizona man is dead of a heart attack and his wife was hospitalized after the couple ingested a type of chloroquine, a chemical that has been hailed recently by President Trump as a possible ‘game changer’ in the fight against novel coronavirus,” reports National Public Radio.
The Hill reported in a since-deleted (at least there’s that) tweet, “Man dies after taking malaria medication touted by Trump as possible cure for coronavirus.”
“A man has died after ingesting chloroquine phosphate — one of the anti-malaria drugs that Trump has mentioned in recent days,” Axios reported in a tweet that has also been deleted. Axios at least issued a correction later for the news story that accompanied the deleted tweet.
Its story now includes an editor’s note that reads, “This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the form of chloroquine the couple ingested was used in aquariums — and it was not a medication.”
Good for the Hill and Axios for deleting their misleading tweets. But, uh, do you ever notice how much less careful the media are when it comes to any story perceived as harmful for Trump?
Forbes, meanwhile, published an article whose opening lines read:
Except it just did.
No, it most certainly did not.
Whether Trump (and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for that matter) is wrong to promote the potential of “chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine” as a cure for COVID-19 is debatable. Whether Trump encouraged this couple to drink poison is not debatable. It’s ridiculous.
