When is Fake News, Propaganda?

Is the following “Fake news” or propaganda, or both? The New York Times reported in a recent story that 900,000 children had been hospitalized with the COVID-19 infection so far during the pandemic. The story came out Oct. 6, 2021 when there was a lot of push by the federal, state, local governments, and the teachers' unions to have all school children vaccinated to open the schools. Two days later, on October 8, the Times retracted the story indicating that the actual number of children was only 63,000. The Times reported the number of children admitted to hospitals was off by 837,000 children. The story also said that Denmark and Sweden were giving out single vaccine doses to children between the ages of 5-12. This was also false as neither government has given out any doses to children of those ages. Clearly, this initial story was propaganda, and it was so egregious the Times had to pull it back because of the errors and the intense heat they took in offering the propaganda. 

Looking at the mortality of children in America with COVID-19, as of October 6, 2021, the data resource company Statista reported that since the pandemic started, 499 children (1) below the age of 12 have died from COVID-19. According to the 2020 census, there were 60.77 million children in the United States. If we apply 499 deaths as a percentage of all the children in the age group, the percentage of deaths is .00000831%. Negligible. UNICEF in May 2021 accounted for 8,700 deaths worldwide of children (2) from COVID-19 out of a world population of 7.7 billion. Looking at the significant causes of death for children under 12 in the United States, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, in 2016, of the 20,360 child deaths in the United States, 60% came from an injury. That is, 12,216 children died from injuries. The most startling number was that of child suicide with 2,500 (3) Over 5 times as many children died from suicide than from COVID-19 in the pandemic. Do we hear from the President, Congress, governors, mayors, school boards, and teacher unions about child suicide? 

Going back to the title question, was the New York Times spewing fake news or propaganda? I think it is a good idea to start by defining terms. According to the Oxford dictionary, “Fake News” is defined as news stories that are false reports of events. Propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. As we know, governments have used propaganda as a means of controlling what people think or do. The following quote is from Joseph Goebbels, Hilter's propaganda minister in Nazi Germany, "If you repeat a lie often enough, people believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself."  

We had the mainstream media for almost 5 years fill the radio, TV, and print media implying that President Trump was evil. They used propaganda to distract the American people away from all of the good things he accomplished. As an example, look at all the things repeatedly said by congressmen and women and the press that was never included in the original Trump impeachment. They knew it was propaganda, and they knew it was not true. They didn’t care about the truth. 

We are told by President Biden to look at the science on vaccinations of young people. We have already seen that “the science” from worldwide sources doesn't support putting these jabs in children's arms. If that is true, then why is the Biden administration pushing shots for school-age children? In a word, "Control." The Biden administration wants to control what you can say and what you can do. The DOJ instructed the FBI  to look into school board meeting outbursts where parents wanted to ask questions about policies and the curriculum. The parents are now being called "Domestic Terrorists,” and are subject to arrest by the local police or even the FBI and the possibility of jail time. 

The left's messages have to match the left's intent regardless of what freedoms we will be asked to give up. I wish that I could say that the propaganda from the left is being seen by all Americans as just propaganda, but the reality is that millions of Americans believe the propaganda is the truth. Even after the New York Times corrected the story, I believe most people who saw the original article stating 900,000 children never saw the correction to 63,000.  

To all of those people who never look for corrections, the propaganda of the left is working. When the media becomes the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party, we must be more diligent. The biggest challenge is that the barrage of propaganda is never-ending and relentless. If the President doesn't allow questions from the press and tells the media leadership what not to write about or ask questions about, it becomes clear that the left wants to control the message and, in turn, you. Try and find out how many questions President Biden has had on the millions of people crossing the border illegally and the impact on real Americans.  

And so, I ask, “When is fake news dangerous propaganda?”

NOTES:

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
2. https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/covid-19/
3. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1804754