When a 'conspiracy theory' turns out to be...not a theory

Washington Examiner ^

[MNDude]

Konnech officials assured the New York Times that "none of the accusations were true." Thompson reported that employees "feared for their safety" from right-wing violence and that "Konnech's founder and chief executive, Eugene Yu, an American citizen who immigrated from China in 1986, went into hiding with his family after receiving threatening messages."

Any reasonable reader would come away with the conclusion that Konnech, an innocent company that makes products to deal with "basic election logistics, such as scheduling poll workers," has been the target of crazy, and possibly dangerous, conspiracy theories. To press the point, the New York Times used the phrase "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy theorists" nine times in the article, once in the headline — "How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target" — seven times in the body of the story, and once in a photo caption. Got it?

Fast forward one day. Twenty-four hours. The New York Times published another story about Konnech, this one headlined, "Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft." Thompson reported that Yu had been "arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers."

But in the Konnech story, the New York Times just jumped to the defense of the good guys against the bad guys. Why? The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney tweeted, "It's the same reason everything about Hunter Biden's laptop was considered disinformation right away, deserving of a media blackout." In other words, The New York Times assumed — a simple, unexamined, emotion-based assumption — who the good guys were and who the bad guys were in the story. And in this case, it appears, the paper got it wrong.

[limitedgov]

Best quote I heard (from a Freeper):

“I need a new conspiracy theory, all my old ones have come true!”

[M Kehoe]

Bttt.

5.56mm