Indy Digest: Sept. 21, 2023
One of the biggest threats to our democracy/republic/whatever you want to call it is misinformation.
Yeah, I know I keep harping on the dangers of misinformation in this space, but there’s a reason. Actually, there are a lot of reasons. Misinformation is responsible for millions of people believing the 2020 presidential election was stolen, even though there’s not a single speck of credible evidence that it was. Misinformation is the reason why vaccine hesitancy is leading to needless illness and death. It’s why some people don’t believe that human-caused climate change is a problem—despite near-unanimous scientific consensus.
Social media has been one of the primary drivers of misinformation—and now that Elon Musk is in control of Twitter/X, matters are only getting worse.
For a prime example of this, let’s look to Las Vegas, and specifically a misinformation-caused mess involving the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper. In a Sept. 18 piece headlined “Demonizing journalists to spread disinformation is dangerous and undemocratic,” executive editor Glenn Cook explained what happened.
Here are the facts: On Aug. 14, a speeding car struck and killed a bicyclist named Andreas Probst, a 64-year-old retired police chief. The car was stolen by two teens—and that they purposely ran down Probst, with one of them filming a video of the murder. As Cook writes, “It’s a snuff film.” The 17-year-old driver was charged with murder; the Review-Journal wrote about the video and the murder charge on Aug. 31, when these awful details came to light.
Glenn explains where misinformation comes into the story: “But somehow, someone who watched the video … found one of the Review-Journal’s first reports on Probst’s killing—the Aug. 18 obituary that identified Probst as the victim—and made the false assumption that the story was reported after the video was discovered and after the driver was charged with murder. A social media post was created, accusing the Review-Journal of deliberately characterizing the murder of a retired lawman as a ‘bike crash,’ words from the obituary’s headline. As the post quickly circulated through the feeds and groups of like-minded media bashers, the narrative worsened. Assumptions were made about the race of the two people in the car. We were far-left, anti-cop, anti-white liars. And a whole lot of other things I can’t write here. Of course, we didn’t know about the video at the time this particular story was written. Neither did police. But untold thousands of angry readers didn’t want the facts to get in the way of this frenzy.”
One of the people who didn’t want to let the facts get in the way of the frenzy? Elon Musk.
“At 3:08 a.m. Sunday (Sept. 17),” Cook wrote, “(Musk) retweeted a screen grab from the Review-Journal app with the misunderstood story, and wrote, ‘An innocent man was murdered in cold blood while riding his bicycle. The killers joked about it on social media. Yet, where is the media outrage? Now you begin to understand the lie.’”
That tweet, by the way, is still up as of this writing. It has 72.5 million views.
Sabrina Schnur, the reporter who wrote the original story, as well as other Review-Journal staffers, have since been inundated with vitriol. Cook wrote that social-media users “filled Twitter/X with comments and tags that ranged from anti-Semitic to death wishes for (Schnur) and her dog. She had more than 700 notifications of malevolence as of Sunday, and they’re still coming.”
Elon Musk and many of the others who spread this misinformation and fanned the figurative flames should be ashamed. But they’re not.
It’s crucial that all of us make sure that the information we’re sharing—be it in conversations, via social media, or anywhere else—is accurate, from a reliable source.
Because not only does misinformation deceive; it could wind up getting someone innocent killed.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
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A Charitable Reunion: The Concert for Autism Is Back for Four Events That Raise Money for the Desert Autism Foundation
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Civic Solutions: Instead of Overseeding Grass, Can We Adopt a ‘Golden’ State of Mind?
By Maria Sestito
September 19th, 2023
In September and October, much of the grass in the Coachella Valley is scalped, and new grass seed is planted on top of the old grass. It’s called “overseeding”—and it costs a lot of time, money and water.
Vine Social: Some Information on a Wine Label Has Value; Some Is Just There for flair
By Katie Finn
September 19th, 2023
Here is your guide to decoding wine labels, and the important information to look for—and the garbledy-goop to ignore.
The Weekly Independent Comics Page for Sept. 21, 2023!
By Jimmy Boegle
September 21st, 2023
Topics touched upon this week include Pilates, grimy shoes, tax cuts for billionaires, Mitt Romney; and more!
More News
• Partially related to the intro: Don’t expect long (figurative) lines to get the updated COVID-19 booster … although, fingers crossed, those figurative lines may be longer than the lines last year. Reuters reports: “Pfizer expects 24% of the U.S. population, or about 82 million people, to receive COVID-19 shots this year, CFO David Denton said at a conference on Monday, reiterating the vaccine maker’s estimates from earlier this year. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized updated COVID vaccines from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, as well as from Moderna, as the country prepares to start a fall vaccination campaign. … During the last re-vaccination campaign, when most Americans had either already had the COVID virus or been previously vaccinated, only around 56.5 million people got the updated booster shots, according to federal data. But last week, a Reuters/Ipos poll showed that about half of Americans are interested in getting an updated COVID vaccine.”
• A longstanding and famous water operation just up the road is in serious legal trouble. The Los Angeles Times says: “For decades, water has been siphoned from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains and piped downhill to be bottled and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water. After a years-long fight over the bottled water operation in the San Bernardino National Forest, California water regulators ruled Tuesday that the company must stop taking millions of gallons through its pipelines. The State Water Resources Control Board voted unanimously to order the company BlueTriton Brands to ‘cease and desist’ taking much of the water it has been piping from tunnels and boreholes in the mountains near San Bernardino. Environmentalists, who have campaigned for years against bottling water from the forest, praised the decision. … The controversy erupted after a 2015 investigation by the Desert Sun revealed that the U.S. Forest Service was allowing Nestlé to continue siphoning water from the national forest using a permit that listed 1988 as the expiration date.”
• The government is again offering free COVID-19 tests. CNBC reports: “The Biden administration on Wednesday said it will resume offering free at-home COVID tests to American households Monday as the virus gains a stronger foothold nationwide. Americans will soon be able to use COVIDtests.gov to request four free tests, the administration said in a release. The government had offered free test kits through that website since January 2022, but the site stopped taking orders June 1 of this year to conserve supplies of the tests. The government is relaunching the program in time for the fall and winter when the virus typically spreads at higher levels. COVID hospitalizations have already increased for eight straight weeks—an uptick primarily driven by newer strains of the virus.
• The state is suing two so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” for making iffy-at-best claims about something called “abortion pill reversal.” Calmatters reports: “Heartbeat International, a national anti-abortion group, and RealOptions Obria, a chain that operates five crisis pregnancy centers in Northern California, both promote services to ‘reverse’ the medication abortion process. (Atty. Gen. Rob) Bonta is suing both groups in Alameda Superior Court under the state’s False Advertising and Unfair Competition laws. …The 30-page complaint alleges the two organizations use fraudulent and misleading claims to promote the safety and efficacy of an experimental hormone therapy to stop medication abortion from proceeding. In a statement, a representative for Heartbeat International said the organization learned about the lawsuit through media requests and has not yet been served. The statement says more than 4,500 women have had ‘successful abortion pill reversals.’”
• And now for the latest recall news: First up is “cheese.” Yes, the quote marks are there for a reason. NPR says: “Kraft Heinz is recalling 83,800 cases of individually wrapped Kraft Singles American processed cheese slices over concerns of a potential choking hazard. The food giant said Tuesday that a malfunctioning wrapping machine left a thin strip of plastic film on some processed cheese slices, after the wrapper had been removed. ‘If the film sticks to the slice and is not removed, it could be unpleasant and potentially cause a gagging or choking hazard,’ the company said.” As always, peruse the story for specifics.
• Next on the recall list is … mattresses? Yep! CBS News says: “About 48,000 mattresses sold at Costco are under recall after hundreds of consumers reported mold growing on them, the Consumer Safety Product Commission said on Thursday. The mattresses, sold only at Costco stores and on Costco.com, were made by FXI and sold under the Novaform brand name between between January and June of this year. The mattresses were sold at Costco stores in the San Francisco Bay region and the Northwest, as well as online on the retailer’s website, with prices ranging from $150 to $750. Foam inside the mattress could have been exposed to water during manufacturing, allowing mold to develop—a potential health risk to people who are allergic to mold or who have compromised immune systems or damaged lungs. FXI received 541 reports from consumers of mold on the mattresses, according to the CPSC.” Ew.
• And finally … are some crocodiles dog-lovers? Probably not, but maybe? Again, we turn to CBS News: “When a young dog in India sought refuge in a river while being chased by a pack of feral animals, it was immediately surrounded by three crocodiles. They were so close they could ‘have easily devoured’ it, experts say, but when their snouts came in contact, they helped save its life instead. The situation was described in a new report published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa by scientists who have spent years studying marsh crocodiles, otherwise known as muggers, in Maharashtra, India. Adult male muggers can get up to 18 feet long and weigh up to 1,000 pounds, according to the Wildlife Institute of India, but according to researchers, that massive size doesn’t always mean they’re aggressive.” The story goes on to say these crocs … love marigolds? The planet Earth is weird.
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