The repugicans and Faux News have won PolitiFact’s lie
of the year award for spreading inaccurate information and hysteria
about Ebola.
PolitiFact explained why they chose the wingnut’s Ebola hysteria as the lie of the year.
PolitiFact and PunditFact rated 16 separate
claims about Ebola as Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire on our
Truth-O-Meter in 2014. Ten of those claims came in October, as Duncan’s
case came to the fore and as voters went to the polls to select a new
Congress.
Faux News hack George Will claimed Ebola could be
spread into the general population through a sneeze or a cough, saying
the conventional wisdom that Ebola spreads only through direct contact
with bodily fluids was wrong.
“The problem is the original assumption, said with
great certitude if not certainty, was that you need to have direct
contact, meaning with bodily fluids from someone, because it’s not
airborne,” Will said. “There are doctors who are saying that in a sneeze
or some cough, some of the airborne particles can be infectious.”
False.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, r-Ky., described Ebola as “incredibly contagious,” “very transmissible” and “easy to catch.” Mostly False.
Members of Congress even came up with their own
scenarios, with some suggesting that Ebola could be a security threat to
the United States carried in by illegal immigrants or terrorists. But
such ideas contradicted basic facts about the disease.
In early October, Faux News posted a list of
the top nine scariest pandemic movies. At the top was the 1995 film
Outbreak, in which a virus mutates, becomes airborne and forces the Army
to consider dropping a nuclear weapon on a sleepy California town.
PolitiFact also called out the cable news networks
for endlessly hyping the hysteria, but make no mistake about it; the
hysteria was being fueled by false information being delivered by repugicans on a daily basis. President Obama spent the better part of a
month debunking Ebola misinformation that repugicans kept putting out
there.
The repugicans lied about Ebola because they were using
panic and fear to create mistrust of the government in order to steal an
election. Once repugicans stole control of the Senate, Ebola stopped
being a pressing issue. Ebola was such a non-issue that House repugicans took the country to the brink of another government shutdown
that would have delayed more funding for combating Ebola last week.
The cable news networks tried to use Ebola to
increase ratings. The repugicans used Ebola to steal an election. Lost in all
of the needless hysteria was the fact that the American people never had
anything to fear about Ebola.
The Ebola panic demonstrated that fear based
politics didn’t die with the shrub junta. Fear remains the repugican weapon of choice, and the corporate media are happy to go
along for the ride if it means increased ratings and profits.
The lie of the year award has returned to its rightful wingnut place in 2014.
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