Politico, Axios, and NBC News peddle a bizarre smear of Clarence Thomas

Supreme Courtroom Justice Clarence Thomas precisely reported the medical information behind an ethical objection to COVID-19 vaccines. A number of reporters and a minimum of three retailers twisted his phrases in order to falsely “reality test” him Thursday morning on some declare he by no means made.

By Friday morning, neither NBC News nor Axios had corrected their error, and the authors’ and retailers’ false or deceptive tweets remained on show. The entire incident is an ideal instance of how a lot of the liberal media stay in a liberal echo chamber and are prepared to desert requirements and imagine something that makes pro-lifers look dangerous.

Adam Edelman and Aria Bendix at NBC News unfold the lie, and so did Orlana Gonzales at Axios. Politico wrote about it too. Listed here are the very deceptive tweets:

and

All three of those tweets (and a few of the headlines and story leads) are so distorted as to be false smears.

Axios said straight in its “Actuality Test” what it was implying in its headline and tweet: “No coronavirus vaccine within the U.S. comprises the cells of aborted fetuses.”

Politico wrote in its tweet: “No Covid vaccines within the U.S. comprise the cells of aborted fetuses.”

Nice. Thomas by no means stated any vaccines contained the cells of aborted fetuses. He by no means cited anybody making that declare. However Axios, Politico, and NBC went out of their solution to suggest he did.

What Thomas stated was some pro-lifers "object on non secular grounds to all obtainable COVID–19 vaccines as a result of they had been developed utilizing cell strains derived from aborted kids.”

It is a 100% factually true assertion. It's true each that some pro-lifers object on these grounds and that the vaccines had been "developed utilizing cell strains derived from aborted kids.” Science journal, to make use of only one instance, has written that the vaccines had been “manufactured utilizing cells derived from human fetuses electively aborted many years in the past” — nearly the identical actual wording as Thomas.

Pfizer and Moderna, whereas creating the vaccines, examined them on a line of cells derived from the kidney of an aborted Dutch child. Johnson & Johnson used a cell line derived from a distinct aborted child not within the testing, however within the manufacture of the vaccine. The cells derived from the newborn aren’t within the vaccine, however the cells act as one thing of a catalyst for a vital ingredient (the adenovirus) within the J&J vaccine.

Thomas didn’t declare that the cells of aborted kids are within the vaccines, however NBC News, Politico, and Axios all wrote as if he did. They had been lifeless flawed on an simply checkable reality.

How did this occur? How did three retailers all “reality test” a declare Thomas by no means made, implying or stating that he did make it?

First off, this exhibits that NBC News reporters Edelman and Bendix, together with Axios reporter Gonzalez, lack familiarity with the pro-life arguments they wrote about. Using these abortion-derived two cell strains within the improvement of the COVID-19 vaccines has been a subject of debate and dialogue for over 18 months.

It’s not shocking that Edelman, Bendix, and Gonzalez don’t personally care about abortion-derived cell strains, however it’s unlucky that reporters writing about pro-life objections to vaccines are clearly 100% unfamiliar with these information.

Secondly, the incident means that some within the media haven’t but discovered to cease following Mark Joseph Stern.

Right here was Stern’s tweet that got here shortly earlier than these three tales.

Stern truly doesn’t say something false, he simply weirdly writes that “Thomas claims that COVID vaccines had been developed with the usage of ‘aborted kids,’” a “declare” that's actually true.

The tweet went viral, and uninformed Twitter liberals reacted the way in which you’d count on.

The shocking factor is the reporters reacted the identical manner and rushed their deceptive or false tales, tales that misrepresented what Thomas wrote and ignored how the medication had been developed, to print with out checking.