TJ Walker recounts an anecdote in which a Las Vegas constituent, Larry Pfeiffer, invented a story that Senator Harry Reid had been assaulted by his brother and that the incident was covered up. Conservative bloggers and national conservative radio hosts picked up the false story without verification, and Pfeiffer later revealed it was a hoax — used to demonstrate how parts of the media will spread unverified narratives that fit their biases. Walker also notes similar failures on the left (citing Rolling Stone's UVA article) and challenges listeners to audit their media intake, removing outlets that repeatedly publish biased or unverified claims.
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Larry Pfeiffer proves the media is made up of a bunch of liars. This is a fascinating, funny and sad story about the state of our media. Larry Pfeiffer, a guy who lives in Las Vegas, is a constituent of Democratic leader Senator Harry Reid. Now as you may recall, Harry Reid was in an accident in his home gym, broke some bones and essentially blinded himself in one eye. And it was not a pretty picture. This was a number of months ago. Larry Pfeiffer had a theory. His theory was that there is a huge, huge section of the so called news media that doesn't care about facts, doesn't fact check, doesn't investigate. They will simply spread any lie as long as it fits a narrative. So here's what he did. It's really pretty clever. He started calling conservative bloggers and telling them the story that he had proof that Senator Harry Reid's brother was drunk, got into a fight with Harry Reid, punched him, it was a big, big family squabble. And blinded Harry Reid. And this was all a big cover up on the part of Senator Harry Reid and a big scandal. Again, he didn't have a single shred of evidence, a single fact. But lo and behold, it fit the narrative of what conservative bloggers wanted to hear. If there's something that makes a Democrat look stupid, foolish, like a liar, they're happy to run with a story and they don't really care about the facts. That was his thesis and it turned out he was proven correct. So this story got into blogs. It then went from there to Laura Ingraham's nationally syndicated talk radio show, Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated show. It's now become essentially an article of truth among the conservative media establishment and many conservatives around the country. And the person who started it all has publicly announced it's a hoax. Now folks, I'm not suggesting it's always one sided. You could make the case that Rolling Stone did the same thing with their story about the University of Virginia. There was a narrative that date rape is of course bad, that all fraternity guys are bad and date rapists, and that anyone who makes an accusation is automatically true. In the fraternity Geyser guilty. They ran with that narrative, didn't really check the facts and smeared an entire university. So you can make the case that it happens across the spectrum. Now here's the challenge I have for you though. And I try to practice what I preach. It's time all of us audited our media intake more often. Every media outlet makes a mistake from time to time. Rolling Stone made a mistake. The question is, do they routinely regularly make mistakes that always make someone on a particular team look foolish, idiotic, criminal, even though all the facts don't back, or there are no facts to back it up? And are there mistakes such that people on their team never look bad? If that's the case, I got news for you. You're not actually reading or watching or listening to news. You are participating in a religious or cult gathering. That's what you're doing. If you're just hearing again and again and again, these people are evil, these people are good. That's not news. It's a cult or religion. Don't kid yourself. So that's my challenge to you, really audit the media, not just for bias, but for bias in a particular way. As far as does this media outlet continually run stories making some side look bad and there are no facts? So that's my challenge for you. I routinely tell you one of the best things on the Internet in my RSS feed is the delete button, the remove button. And I find myself more and more often these days removing media sources when I have just determined they have absolutely zero credibility.
