Drama-driven media coverage of bogus claims breeds lasting public harm

Evidence

But this can have horrible consequences, for if you provide a counternarrative of falsehood to something that is true, it allows motivated reasoning to take root. Political shills were exploiting the media, and the media were misleading their viewers. But there is another angle as well: profit. In an increasingly competitive media environment, networks may have been looking for a “story,” which required some degree of drama. If there is one true thing that Donald Trump said in his book The Art of the Deal it is that the media loves controversy more than truth. How can one justify such an accusation rather than conclude that it was all just an anomaly about an admittedly complex subject? Because it happened again, on the subject of the alleged link between vaccines and autism, based on the bogus research of Dr. Andrew Wakefield in 1998. … Here the drama was even higher. Sick kids and their grieving parents! Hollywood celebrities taking sides! Maybe a conspiracy and a governmental cover-up! And again, the media failed utterly to report the most likely conclusion based on the evidence: Wakefield’s research was almost certainly bogus. He had a massive undisclosed conflict of interest, his research was unreproducible, and his medical license had been revoked. This was all known in 2004, at the height of the vaccine-autism story. Later, when definitive word came out that Wakefield’s research had been a fraud and a hoax, the damage had already been done. Years of split-screen TV debates had taken their toll. Vaccination rates had plummeted and what had once been a nearly eradicated disease—the measles—later had an outbreak among eighty-four people across fourteen states. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 167

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports the general thesis pattern of the sacrifice/grafting articles’ interest in how institutions produce durable harms through well-intentioned routines, though not directly on-topic for any of the three.
• XREF: connects to: Gutting agencies makes them genuinely illegitimate in the public eye over time — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 176; Media false balance gave a discredited vaccine claim lasting public credibility — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 261; A respected publication’s coverage legitimizes scandal into public issue — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 4268 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• A respected publication’s coverage legitimizes scandal into public issue #corroborates (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4268
• Fake news softens trust in sources before status-based propaganda replaces persuasion #expands (0.78) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 229
• Fact-check warnings fail to stop repeated fake headlines gaining perceived truth #expands (0.72) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 70
• Fake news blurred the line between official and media definers #expands (0.72)
• Believing false claims often reflects credible-source trust, not deliberate distortion #qualifies (0.72) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 128