6 Times Reputable News Sources Just Plain Went Crazy

Now, there are many valid critiques of, say, Israeli settlements in the West Bank or Bibi Netanyahu's infatuation with the far right. But you'll find most of those don't contain the phrase "Big Jewry," nor do they compare boosters for Israel to tobacco companies. Both of which New Statesmen did -- at the same time!

Here's a good high-water test: If your political thinkpiece implicitly compares Jewish people to cancer-mongers, it's possible you need a broader perspective. Even we at Cracked understand that, and our foreign policy "credentials" are limited to watching half a season of Homeland when we were drunk on our birthday. (It was a sad birthday, but we're not the ones on trial here.)

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At this point, you'd think the article was teeing up to address simmering racial tensions in an otherwise Rockwellian portraiture, but no. Stein only wants to bitch about how the town is now "a maze of charmless Indian strip malls," complain about the food being too spicy, and lament that the local theater now plays Bollywood movies. It seems these are the spiritual crises that attend the "displacement" of middle-class dudes from suburban New Jersey.

Stein eventually admits that he once helped gentrify Chelsea, so he guesses he can forgive Indian people for liking the movies they like and cooking spicy food in an area he once had some personal stake in. What a generous soul.

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In short, The Times couldn't have fetishized their rich Manhattanite reporter's outsider status more if they made him wear a safari hat and talk like David Attenborough. You want to know the sorts of people who live in Brooklyn, New York Times? They're people who can't afford a studio apartment in Manhattan because New York's beau monde all bought second apartments below 14th Street just so they don't have to take the subway home after dining at Cipriani. We wish that was a derisive example we made up, but The New York Times goddamn reported that story in the breathless tone of a baby vamp that somehow made it past the door at Jay Gatsby's garden party.

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Rabinowitz goes on to describe the bike share program as "totalitarian," ominously warns "the bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise," and assures her interviewer, "I represent the majority of citizens." She also describes then-mayor Michael Bloomberg as an "autocrat," for good measure.

To be fair to The Wall Street Journal, they did begin to warm to Citi Bikes after a few years. But there was a brief moment there in 2013 when they tried to start a revolution over a bunch of dirty bicycles, and we should never let them forget it.

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Also every few years, some scandalized tipster puts a bug in the Fourth Estate's ear that a bunch of 20-somethings in peak physical condition, high on adrenaline, and crammed together in dormitories so snug that everybody can smell the cologne Ryan Lochte dips his testicles in before bedtime might be -- get this -- sexually active.

Listen, that's not a groundbreaking story, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Until, as New Media is often wont to do, The Daily Beast thought they'd turn the goddamn game on it's ear by -- and you're going to think this is just a hoot and a half -- paying one of their straight, married reporters to go on Grindr, pose as gay, and lure gay Olympians into conversation. You know, like a trap.

Like a fun trap.

Don't worry -- in the writer's own words, he "didn't lie to anyone." After they showed up, and only if they actively caught him out. In that case, he freely "confessed to being a journalist" right "as soon as anyone asked who was." Ethics!

The article then proceeds to out a bunch of closeted athletes to the public by publishing not-so-circumspect descriptions of all the gay men in question. And if that's not insane enough for you, the writer himself admits that some of the athletes live in "notoriously homophobic" countries, which is the reason they remain closeted. So in summary, The Daily Beast happily risked the lives of several strangers because they were homosexual, and they did it all for nothing. Because at the end of the day, that story was still about the Olympics, and the world at large doesn't really give a damn about the Olympics.

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It turns out that one sentence in the WHO report -- the one about half of all HIV cases being self-inflicted -- was quoting another report in The Lancet. Meanwhile, that Lancet report was itself quoting a third report by an organization called the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Problem was, every time the passage got re-quoted, it became more and more inflammatory.

The original report read: "An additional factor the committee believed worth considering is the well-founded suspicion that some problem users are intentionally infected with HIV." But there was no data attached to that claim; it was nothing but a suspicion some committee had. Then, when The Lancet quoted that report, the assertion became: "An authoritative report described accounts of deliberate self-infection by a few individuals to obtain access to benefits of 700 euro per month and faster admission onto drug substitution programmes." That escalation finally mutated into the WHO's weirdly specific: "HIV rates and heroin use have risen significantly, with about half of new HIV infections being self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of 700 euro per month and faster admission on to drug-substitution programmes."

So the claim went from "Our committee has this crazy hunch that somewhere out there, some lazy Greek bastard is giving himself HIV in exchange for $1,000 a month" to "An authoritative study proves that some Greek people give themselves HIV for drugs and money" to "HALF OF ALL GREEK PEOPLE ARE GIVING THEMSELVES HIV, THE RATS ARE IN THE CORN, ABANDON ALL HOPE."

J.C. Breen lives and works in New York City. If you liked this article, be sure to follow this here link to his website, where you can dig through his more alienating, less financially viable work.

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