The New York Times Spread Dangerous Health Disinformation, Erased It, Hopes You Don’t Notice
The New York Times aided the MAGA, anti-science FDA in its mission to undermine the public’s trust in life saving vaccines. Another example of editorial decisions undermining trust in the Grey Lady.
This November, the New York Times published an article with a frame that strongly implied COVID-19 vaccines kill children. The next day the piece was rewritten with an entirely different, more responsible frame, but readers were given no indication of the change. My MAD colleagues and I are shocked by what appears to be a novel example of a complete premise rewrite by the Times with no acknowledgment whatsoever.
The New York Times spread health disinformation that was picked up and spread by other outlets. They then made substantial edits without adhering to basic journalism standards, choosing to destroy the evidence rather than issue a clarifying correction.
Now, the genie is out of the bottle. Untold numbers of Americans saw the “paper of record” tell them the COVID-19 vaccines are now unsafe for children.
Let me walk you through what happened.
A Journalistic Crime
On November 28, Times reporter Christina Jewett published a piece headlined, “F.D.A. Attributes 10 Children’s Deaths to Covid Vaccines.” The article amplified an internal F.D.A. memo claiming COVID-19 vaccines killed kids, despite there being no scientific proof provided in the memo to support this claim. Jewett and her editors, by headlining the piece as they did, chose a frame that passed along dangerous, unverified claims.
The Department of Health and Human Services, of which the F.D.A. is a part, is widely understood to have been taken over by grifters and crackpots waging a war on science. An Associated Press investigation found that hundreds of anti-science bills have been introduced in statehouses this year, “pushed by people with special interests who have close ties to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Dr. Vinay Prasad, the F.D.A’s top vaccine regulator who wrote the memo, has been widely criticized by public health experts for misrepresenting evidence on the efficacy of masks and COVID-19 vaccines.
The New York Times reporter on the F.D.A. beat should be aware of these dynamics and take extra care to inoculate the public from dangerous figures already known for spreading health disinformation.
And yet.
The Times’ assault on public understanding wasn’t limited to the headline. The beginning of the article (especially if one removes the milquetoast third graph) reads like an RFK Jr. press release.
This outright stenography of a known disinformer is as disgraceful as it is harmful. A portion of readers will believe this disinformation because health agency leaders are delivering it and the New York Times appears to affirm it without providing the essential context of our health leadership’s anti-science agenda. Some will avoid vaccination and could die as a result.
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Thirteen hours after the article first appeared it was edited with an entirely new, somewhat more responsible frame and headline, “F.D.A. Seeks More Oversight of Vaccine Trials and Approvals.” Maybe enough readers complained. Maybe a few doctors wrote to Ms. Jewett.
The fact-free pronouncement by Dr. Prasad “that Covid-19 vaccines have killed American children” was no longer the prime story. His quotation was moved down a couple paragraphs. Above it was a sentence warning that the F.D.A. findings haven’t been published in respected medical journals, that critics are suspicious of the claims, and that there is scientific consensus that COVID-19 shots are safe. The focus was now the larger impact of anti-science at the F.D.A.
Jewitt also erased a reference in the original article to Retsef Levi, an M.I.T. management expert (read, not a medical professional, merely another crackpot among the other dangerously unqualified people in positions of power within H.H.S.) who was placed in charge of a C.D.C. panel reviewing COVID-19 vaccines. Jewitt originally printed Levi’s assertion that the vaccines are a failed product that cause “serious harm including death” without contextualizing for readers that he has zero credibility.
The problems with this article extend beyond Jewitt’s undisclosed erasure of its harmful frame.
In both versions a false equivalence was established between RFK Jr.’s army of disinformers and the authoritative voices of experts. According to Jewett, Kennedy’s crew in the “medical freedom community” simply “reject vaccination.” No context is given to the reader that RFK Jr. and his ilk purposefully deny science to turn a profit and undermine public confidence in scientific consensus. Forgiving renderings of these grifters are ‘balanced’ with quotes from respected, credible medical professionals, delivered in a manner that suggests a difference of opinion amongst qualified parties:
“Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a critic of Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine policies, called the memo an example of science ‘by press release.’”
Worse, all of the quotations from legitimate experts appeared in the latter half of the article. This choice by the Times privileges the disinformers. We are more likely to remember the first piece of information we encounter better than information presented later on, a cognitive science phenomenon called primacy effect.
And cognitive science further suggests that any changes to the article don’t do much for public understanding anyway. Research on the continued influence effect shows that when people see a false story first and a correction later, the original misinformation influences reasoning even after it’s been debunked. Subsequent expert information is often judged against the initial frame instead of on its own terms.
But it’s not like readers would even know they had seen a false story first. The Times basically covered it up. The article appears timestamped for eternity with the original publication date. As of December 12, there was no indication of any corrections, edits or updates.
A Viral Russian Nesting Doll Of Disinfo
The New York Times’ failure here damages public understanding at a scale well beyond its own readership.
The Times is a powerful node within our news ecosystem. Its reporting spreads via syndication deals with other media organizations. Newsrooms and social media influencers regularly repurpose Times reporting to generate their own content (as in “According to reporting by the New York Times…”).
Within hours, Jewett’s report spread across our information ecosystem. Below is a screenshot of MSN syndicating a Reuters syndication of the Times piece, a Russian nesting doll of health disinformation.
Before long, MAGA accounts on Twitter/X used Reuters reporting on the Times’ story to celebrate a false vindication.
This journalistic failure wasn’t limited to the New York Times, either. The Washington Post wrote their own FDA memo story entitled, “Blaming some child deaths on covid shots, FDA vows stricter vaccine rules.” In an illustration of how the information pipelines flow within our concentrated media ecosystem, that reporting was repurposed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, who framed the piece with the awful headline, “FDA: Covid Vaccine Linked to 10 Child Deaths.”
Six out of ten Americans share articles to their social media after only reading the headline.
Damage done.
Trust In Media?
This episode raises existential questions about trust in media.
Should the New York Times edit and change headlines online without informing readers? Sadly, they do this all the time. Many took note recently when the Ross Douthat headline, “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” was later replaced with, “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” The Times has made no acknowledgment of that change.
(For a fascinating look into this phenomenon, be sure to follow Editing The Blue-Grey Lady on Bluesky, an account that tracks changes to the Times’ “Top Stories” feed.)
When their work is used by other news organizations does the Times have an obligation to very clearly issue emphatic corrections? What if the New York Times rewrites the copy in a piece after it is published? Should they document and acknowledge the post-publication edits? They did none of these standard journalism practices for this piece. We think they should!
Trust in media is at an all time low. In an October Gallup poll, just 28% of Americans expressed “a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”
Not only was the original piece shameful, the unacknowledged rewrite further erodes trust. Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger’s paper sanitized and normalized the profound assaults being waged by RFK Jr. and his cronies upon our public health agencies–assaults that will have harmful consequences–then erased it as if it never happened. The New York Times aided the F.D.A. in its mission to undermine the public’s trust in life saving vaccines. That is the story here. After this profoundly irresponsible display, why should the public trust the New York Times about anything?
Another even more compelling story here, the one to pursue if interested in doing journalism in the public interest, is how the credibility of the C.D.C. and F.D.A. is being destroyed by unqualified people waging a war on science and reality. Imagine that were the framing of this piece.
We’ve petitioned AG Sulzberger to bring back a Public Editor, the person at a news organization who takes critical errors like those displayed here seriously and ensures adherence to journalism ethics.
The careless dissemination of disinformation matters. The Grey Lady sanctioned a lie that wasn’t “fit to print.” And now some may die after believing this lie, delivered to them by their trusted source of news.
You can’t put that genie back in the bottle.
NOTE: Here’s an example of how easy it is to NOT willfully spread disinformation when reporting on the known grifters leading our public health agencies. It’s from, of all places, CBS Mornings:
Brian Hansbury is a MAD co-founder. He’s also the creator of Public Enlightenment, where he continues the work of achieving a better-informed electorate via videos and articles that debunk disinformation, explain our information ecosystem, educate on media literacy, and uplift trustworthy newsrooms reporting in the public interest. Join the army he’s building to fight the Information War on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and at publicenlightenment.com.
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Great catch and article. The headlines are a special mess these days.
Wow! Thanks so much, Dan, for this thorough examination of the NY Times doing a great disservice to its readers and the public in general around our public health crises. Accountability, transparency, and honesty are becoming increasingly rare values in our media. Glad we have such excellent journalists and media critics, such as yourself, keeping a close eye on this.