Right-winger David Horowitz’s website, FrontPageMag, has a new article written by Daniel Greenfield, “an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.” The article has a compelling title: “Thugs Killed More People in Chicago Than Coronavirus Did.” Greenfield’s story explained how the coronavirus wasn’t much of a threat to the public compared to criminals committing murder:
So far this year, 117 people have been killed, and 522 were wounded. By the time you read this, the numbers will be higher.
Only 86 people in Chicago, so far, have died of the coronavirus.
Chicago’s thugs can give any pandemic a run for its money. And then shoot it in the back.
I immediately realized that Greenfield’s numbers can’t possibly be true. In reality, the pandemic is far more deadly than murderers in Chicago. At the time the FrontPageMag article was published, the city of Chicago reported that 500 people had died so far from COVID-19, not 86. In the past 30 days, coronavirus has killed 10 times as many people as murderers have in Chicago, yet the desire to downplay the impact of COVID-19 leads right-wing media to tell desperate lies completely out of touch with reality.
So I posted a comment on the story, linking to the true facts. I figured that the author would see the comment, feel embarrassed by the mistake, and quickly correct the error or even delete the story, since the entire premise of it was wrong. Greenfield, the author, did see my comment and wrote a response:
It was 86 at the time the article was written.
But Chicago medical examiners keep reclassifying deaths to claim that they died of the coronavirus
https://chicago.suntimes.co...
they're almost as good at finding new coronavirus deaths in cemeteries as they are at finding new votes there
Any day now it will be a billion dead in Chicago
No, the number of deaths was not 86 when Greenfield wrote his article. Greenfield’s article refers to shootings in Chicago “over the weekend” and based on his numbers he actually meant the April 10-12 weekend. But even if we assume that Greenfield wrote his story as early as April 13, the headline and the entire premise of the article was still false when he wrote it. Chicago reported on April 12 that the number of COVID-19 deaths in the city at that time was 277, far more than double the number of homicides for the year. Chicago’s COVID-19 deaths had been above 86 since April 5, for more than a week before Greenfield finished his article and for more than two weeks by the time it was published.
In the middle of a pandemic, using figures over two weeks out of date in order to downplay the number of deaths is completely dishonest. But even if Greenfield made an honest error in failing to update his article before it was published, no responsible journalist would allow a false story with a false headline to remain uncorrected.
When confronted with his obvious error, Greenfield doesn't correct it and clearly doesn't care. Instead, he spouts a conspiracy with no basis in reality, claiming without any evidence that a medical examiner in Chicago is simply fabricating hundreds of COVID-19 deaths, which will soon be “a billion dead.” There aren't a billion dead in Chicago, but journalistic integrity is obviously dead on David Horowitz’s website.
Greenfield was claiming that a newspaper article referring to the medical examiner identifying more victims of COVID-19 was actually proof of a secret plot to inflate the death toll. This is a common conspiracy theory on the right intended to downplay the number of actual deaths in order to argue for ending stay-at-home plans.
In the world of far-right media, COVID-19 is a small problem compared to violent criminals, and when reality doesn’t align with their ideological beliefs, they simply lie. And when confronted with the lie, it makes no difference to them at all.
Tuesday, Apr 21, 2020 · 6:34:26 PM +00:00
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JohnKWilson
FrontPageMag has changed the headline on the article to “Gang Violence Continues Even Under Coronavirus,” although it continues to have the false information that there have been more homicides than COVID-19 deaths in Chicago.