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Comment by dev_by_day | Hacker News Reader

What would you call news outlets like MSNBC spreading lies about the Kyle Rittenhouse case? An honest mistake? Or calling the lab leak theory racist?

Notice how this works?

When a news source that is aligned with your political party gets it wrong "its ok" but when its a new source that is not aligned with your party its "spreading misinformation".

There is no objective standard for misinformation so trying to say disagreement and misinformation are not the same depends entirely on what is the issue being discussed. Any issue with ambiguity can be dismissed far too easily by just claiming it "misinformation".

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I guess your assumption is that everyone left-aligned watches (and agrees with) MSNBC. That isn't true. I certainly don't watch it.

There are reliable news outlets. Don't assume that just because an outlet has a political skew in the direction opposite from your preferred one that everyone you disagree with must watch and endorse it. That's a strawman.

> That's a strawman.

Its a strawman that you are introducing by saying:

> I suspect what you mean by this is "outlets claiming to report 'news' but actually spreading misinformation".

> That's quite different from "disagreement".

I am pointing out that there is not a large difference between what you say is misinformation and disagreement. Many news outlets get things wrong and are guilty of allowing political bias to steer them towards saying things that are not true. You can't just call something misinformation because you disagree with it.

Nearly every news outlet in this country has gotten things wrong at some point and a tenuous definition of misinformation could be used to make them all look bad.

Citing something as "misinformation" is often a strawman argument and a word used to dismiss viewpoints people do not agree with on any issue that has some ambiguity, including the lab leak theory.

When the Lab leak theory had absolutely no evidence for it, and was being purported days after the start of the pandemic, it was racist.

Later, the longer a root cause was not discovered, the more likely the theory became, and the less racist it became to speak about.

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