Karma's A Bitch
NYT misinformation and disinformation writer embarrassed in real time
An American Conspiracy
One of the biggest topics of contention in the US since 2019 has been the presidential election. Or, more to the point, the suspicion that the outcome of it was fraudulent.
I haven't really touched this topic on the podcast yet, but a certain misstep recently by MSM on this conversation was too juicy to overlook.
On October 3rd, I saw an article written by Stuart A. Thompson — reporter on the Technology Desk of the New York Times who covers “Misinformation & Disinformation”. (article linked to the image below)
Now, I’m not big into the whole election fraud conspiracy much more than an interested 3rd party observer. But, the language and demeanor of Thompson in this piece is all too familiar to me. It reeks of the holier-than-thou, smug, smirking articles by MSM about anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and fringe, dangerous minorities we’ve all read over the pandemic.
Some examples of that flavor in his writings:
“At an invitation-only conference in August at a secret location southeast of Phoenix, a group of election deniers unspooled a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential outcome.”
“Using threadbare evidence, or none at all, the group suggested that a small American election software company, Konnech, had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access to personal data…”
“… the attacks on Konnech demonstrate how far-right election deniers are also giving more attention to new and more secondary companies and groups.”
He would continue to cite instances of how said far-right, election denier conspiracy theorists would harass the CEO, Eugene Yu. Causing him and his family to go into hiding.
Honestly, he does a great job of painting Yu as an innocent victim that found himself and his small American company in the crosshairs of a vicious, senseless and irrational mob of vengeful Trump supporters. You start to feel bad for the guy.
Konnech, in the article, assured Thompson that:
“Konnech said none of the accusations were true. It said that all the data for its American customers were stored on servers in the United States and that it had no ties to the Chinese government.”
An elections board official that Thompson interviewed in the article stated of the allegations towards Konnech that:
“‘It’s a completely fabricated issue,’ Dele Lowman Smith, the elections board chair, said in an interview. ‘It’s absolutely bizarre, but it’s part of the tone and tenor of what we’re having to deal with leading up to the elections.’”
Case closed then. It’s a good thing there are people like Stuart A. Thompson at the New York Times to expose the purveyors of mis/disinformation.
The Case Is Far From Closed
If that were all this substack was here to cover, it’d be a pretty boring read. It’d be no better than the NYT article quoted above.
BUT…
… this is where karma makes an appearance. And it happened in near-real-time shortly after the release of the above condemning article.
Well… if you click the image above, you’ll be taken to a breaking news article that dropped just HOURS after the scathing expose the NYT dropped.
You remember that poor, targeted CEO who was victimized by a deranged far-right extremists group?
Well… as it turns out:
“Konnech Corp. CEO Eugene Yu was arrested on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information”
Uh-Oh… turns out, that while Yu was lamenting to Thompson about how he’s scared that these baseless accusations were a threat upon him, at the very same time, he was housing all of his company’s sensitive, private PERSONAL data on election workers in The People’s Republic of China!
In his own words to Thompson, Konnech said:
“… none of the accusations were true. It said that all the data for its American customers were stored on servers in the United States and that it had no ties to the Chinese government.”
America, China… what’s the difference??
Mainstream Malfeasance
So, here’s the take-away, with so many slanted articles coming out of formerly trustworthy institutions of news, it should serve as a wake up call to not only the journalists but their readers that opinion isn’t the guiding principle of the news. And it certainly doesn’t change reality while an election company is off-shoring their sensitive data to china for storage.
The real shame of it all is that, by the time I covered this, the NYT article has a, “Update” over the article stating the following:
Not a retraction, not an apology… just an update that everything written below is actually the misinformation it’s claiming to be exposing.
And here’s the thing, not too many New York Times readers are going to go back and see that update. They read the article days ago. They’ve been informed. They will live their lives with the knowledge of this poor CEO of an honest American company being accosted with unfounded and dangerously wrong disinformation by the far-right “elections deniers”.
But, that’s the reason I wanted to focus on it particularly. So that at LEAST here, our readers will see through. We’ll have a current and obvious example of what we’ve been saying for years now — that the difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact is only a matter of time.
In this case… a matter of hours.
I’ve started an account with “Buy Me a Coffee”!
Buy Me a Coffee is a platform that allows fans and supporters of content like this to send some loose change to their favorite content creators. Basically saying “Thanks for what you do, have a coffee on me.”.
Clearly, they don’t send me actual coffee, but if you feel the urge, the link below makes it extremely easy to casually send $5 my way as a thanks.
Every penny is deeply appreciated by me and my family, and god bless everyone who has the means and inclination to do so! (click the image below)
~ Drew Weatherhead
Listen to the full podcast episode below:
The Social Disorder Podcast: Karma In Real Time
