How JD Vance and the New York Times insult our intelligence with the pet-eating fiasco

So many of us refuse to see the spiritual corruption of our own side. Here are some tools for learning to see what’s right in front of our faces.

We’ve reached a new low. The pet-eating fiasco is so stupid that it’s embarrassing to write about. But, at the same time, it’s also heart-wrenching to see how far we’ve sunk. How we’re willing to say anything. How we’re willing to believe anything. And I mean all of us. Left, Right, and Other. We have to stop. We have to start taking disinformation much more seriously — the disinformation we so badly want to believe, the disinformation that we’re all perpetuating. We have to recognize it and call it out.

And I’m not talking about the disinformation the mainstream media has been freaking-out about for the past decade. I’m not talking about Russian hackers. Because really, what does it amount to? Occasionally a news story will highlight a handful of fake Facebook posts, but if you look more closely at their impact — at how many people they’ve actually reached — it’s usually nil. They’ve reached nobody.

For instance, NPR wrote a story in 2020 where they described Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy saying “Russian actors are trying harder and harder to hide who they are and being more and more deceptive to conceal their operations.” And what was a prime example of all their hard work and treachery? In the article, NPR shared an image of three identical posts shared on three different Facebook groups. The metrics on one of the posts isn’t clear, but the other two collectively garnered a whopping one reaction and one share. Is this really an existential threat to American democracy?

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Compare that to the flurry of activity in the last couple weeks concerning the story of Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.

One of the more prominent places it appeared was in an X post by Ohio’s junior senator (and Trump’s pick for vice-president), JD Vance:

That’s a post with over 128,000 reactions and over 32,000 shares. In it Vance shares what he believes are some tragic “confirmed” facts about Springfield. But by themselves no one would pay much attention to these facts — they’re too common and everyday — so he sprinkles in some sensational rumors about people’s pets being “abducted.” And he doesn’t hide it. He calls them rumors. He says they could all “turn out to be false.”

But that’s the bait. That’s the hook. Immigrants kidnapping someone’s golden retriever. That’s the sugar that helps the medicine go down.

Of course, the rumors aren’t totally baseless. There are videos alleging it on YouTube and TikTok. And he has heard directly from his constituents. But his constituents weren’t reporting their own pets kidnapped, it was their “neighbors.’” So he heard from somebody, who heard from somebody else, that their pet was abducted. And after several weeks of hearing these rumors, Vance decided the only responsible thing was to share them with the world.

But what happened during those several weeks? Did Vance send one of his aids to get to the bottom of the story? Did he contact local officials? Or put some Fox News journalist in touch with his constituents to gather the facts and publish a stunning exposé? It doesn’t seem so. Or if he did, he failed to mention it on X.

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The next step on the rumor mill is Donald Trump. Trump amps the whole thing up. He broadcasted it to the whole world during the presidential debate on September 10th. And everything Trump touches turns into a circus. He makes the story explode.

But how does he know if its true or not? He saw it on TV — there were “people on television saying my dog was taken and used for food.” It’s not clear what channel Trump saw this on, but Trump doesn’t often back up his statements with sources, so that’s nothing new.

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It’s good to stop here for a moment because we’ve already got some prime examples, some helpful aids, for learning to spot disinformation: 1) if a story is especially sensational, and 2) the person saying it doesn’t provide any sources, then it’s usually not worth paying attention to. You should always ask yourself, “Is this story too good to be true?” and “Where are the links?” If you really want it to be true but it just feels a litttttle bit over the top, then you should stop and try to dig into it a bit more. There’s a good chance it’s not true. And if the author doesn’t give you the opportunity to dig in, if they don’t provide any links to original source materials — to eyewitnesses or other forms of evidence — then you should probably just disregard the whole thing.

Of course, at that point it’s not clear that a story is actually disinformation. It’s always possible it could turn out to be true. So really, we just have to wait and see. We can be neutral. Maybe they are kidnapping dogs. But until someone has some real information one way or the other, I can focus on other things.

While we don’t have to condemn the story, it’s a little different with the story-teller. Why is someone spreading rumors they can’t verify? Why aren’t they providing sources and letting people make up their own minds? “Well, I thought it could be true!” just isn’t a real excuse for leading people on a wild goose chase. It lacks integrity.

Alright, that’s enough commentary for now. Back to the fiasco.

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Unfortunately, this whole episode didn’t end with Vance and Trump’s inflammatory remarks. Instead, the mainstream media did what it always seems to do: it leapt head-first onto the crazy train too.

At this point, I’ve come to expect a healthy dose of dishonesty from politicians, so I didn’t pay much attention to this story until earlier this week when the New York Times published an article with the headline, “Vance Sticks By Pet-Eating Claims and Says He’s Willing to ‘Create Stories.’”

Now that sounded sensational to me. JD Vance openly admitting that he created this story, that there’s no reality to it. What an amazing confession to make! Did he just come out and brazenly say it? (“I don’t care, I just made the whole thing up! I lied!”) Or did someone somehow trap him into confessing it? If so, what a scoop that must have been!

Except… now the New York Times is starting to twist the facts. Vance didn’t actually confess anything. Yeah, sure, he did literally say that he was willing to “create stories” in a CNN interview last Sunday with Dana Bash, but it’s not at all what he meant and he immediately corrected the misunderstanding.

This is entirely obvious if you watch this segment of the interview, and it’s actually painful to have to explain it. Here it is:

So JD Vance said something entirely unremarkable, something no one in their right minds would pay any attention to: that he’s willing to elevate or amplify a story. To create a buzz around it. To focus the media’s attention on it.

He’s declaring this as if it’s something heroic, but really anyone who shares a story at all — by posting it on social media, or talking to a friend about it over coffee — is doing this all the time. We are all amplifying the news. In fact, I’m doing it right now. I’m focusing all of us on this issue. I’m “creating” a story.

And that’s clearly what Vance meant. Because really, is it even possible to watch that video and think he’s making some dramatic confession of guilt?

Of course anyone can still claim that Vance made a “Freudian slip” — that he was unconsciously revealing his true actions. Sure. Fine. But who cares about that. That’s not breaking news. And it’s not what the New York Times is claiming in their headline. They’re pretending that he admitted — consciously — to creating stories. And in so doing, they’re intentionally misrepresenting his words.

If you’re still unconvinced, imagine that Kamala Harris said she was so poor when she was a child that her family lived in a one bedroom house and she slept with her brother. Now imagine Fox News running a story with the headline “Kamala Admits She ‘Slept with her Brother’ as a Young Woman.” Oh. My. God! What a bombshell that would be! A presidential candidate admitting to incest! Except… of course that’s not what she meant in this imaginary scenario. Obviously. So why would anyone pretend otherwise? Why would we even talk about it at all? It’s stupid.

But we have to talk about it now because it’s so insidious. It’s so wrong. The New York Times is claiming that Vance is making stuff up out of thin air. That he’s creating untrue stories. That he’s a liar. Those are big claims.

And I’m certainly not defending JD Vance’s character. I’ve already said what I think of politicians, and I’ve also said what I think about Vance’s original pet-abducting claims. He’s spreading rumors. The whole thing lacks integrity.

But now the tables have turned. Now the New York Times is making stuff up out of thin air. Now they’re creating a story… about him creating stories. Now they’re lying… about him lying. It’s so ‘meta’ that it starts to hurt the brain.

And it gets even stranger because the New York Times doesn’t even try to back up their own headline in the rest of the article. They go on to say:

“I’ve been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,” Mr. Vance said on CNN, referring to strains he said that a large influx of Haitian migrants had placed on the city’s public services. He went on: “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

When the CNN host, Dana Bash, noted that he had used the word “creating,” Mr. Vance replied, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”

So the New York Times says one thing in their headline (Vance is a liar who admits he’s willing to “create stories”) and then corrects that misperception in the body of the article itself (he’s actually only “creating the American media focusing on it”).

But of course, the New York Times doesn’t actually correct or refute their original claim. They don’t go on to explain that his use of the word “create” was just a poor word-choice. Instead, they continue with the story as if both realities can exist simultaneously — he can confess to creating the whole story about kidnapped pets, and he can also say he didn’t create it at all.

Why would the New York Times do this? Because they want to sell papers and the title “Vance Makes Poor Word Choice, Says He’s Creating Stories When Really Means He’s Just Highlighting Them” isn’t going to cut it. More importantly though, they want to make Vance look bad and they know that most people only read the headlines — which ultimately means that the idea of a Vance confession will take root in people’s minds and be a little victory in the larger ideological war.

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This is all the more glaring when it comes to the Guardian newspaper. The New York Times is subtle. Their reporting is meant to be the pinnacle of objectivity, the finest journalism in the world. They don’t carry on with a lie for too long in some showy, vulgar way. They just plant it gently in their reader’s minds and move on. They use Vance’s poor word-choice to let people think he admitted something he never admitted at all.

Not the Guardian though. They wholeheartedly claim that Vance did actually admit to his lies. Their headline is “JD Vance admits he is willing to ‘create stories’ to get media attention.”

And so it would seem that the Guardian reporters watched that CNN interview and understood Vance to be making a “stunning admission.” They saw the host of the show, Dana Bash, repeat his own words back to him — “You just said that this is a story that you created” — and they saw him say “Yes!” And, BOOM! There you have it. He admitted the whole thing, clear as day.

But then, they also saw the immediate follow-up where Dana says, “so the eating dogs and cats thing is not accurate.” And they saw Vance give an exasperated, painful eye-roll at her obvious misdirection. And they heard his clear annoyance while correcting her: “Daaana, it comes from first-hand accounts from my constituents.” And we know that the Guardian reporters heard those things because they also include those words in the article. But still, somehow they understood it all to be an admission. (And to add reinforcement, they quote Pete Buttigieg who also understood Vance to be making a “remarkable confession.”)

But really, the Guardian didn’t actually understand it that way at all. How could they? They’re obviously just playing politics. Really, they’re just lying about what Vance said. He obviously didn’t admit or confess anything. What happened was, he made a dumb word-choice, and then the other side lost their minds.

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And this points to one last hallmark of disinformation that we should mention: selective editing.

It doesn’t just happen in videos. It happens in articles whenever writers intentionally leave out some crucial piece of information, some inconvenient part of the story that doesn’t fit their narrative. When that happens we’re not seeing the thing in its proper context, we’re not seeing the picture whole.

Or maybe the writers do actually include that inconvenient part — for instance, the New York Times and Guardian articles both included the rest of what Vance said — but they just emphasize the one part and leave the other part awkwardly hanging on. The reader is then left to puzzle it though — “Wow, he admitted that he made it all up! Oh… wait… did he make it up? Or did he hear it from his constituents? It sounds like he made it up from that title... I think he made it up!”

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This is so painful and sad to watch. How can they do it? How can we do it? How can we stand by, and even nod our heads in approval because it pings our confirmation bias? Do we really care that much about our side being right that we’ll ignore such blatant lies?

It’s so degrading. It makes us into such puny, pathetic things. And the worst is the violence that it does to our inner ideals. In our heart of hearts, every human being wants to work for the good. We want to uphold the truth and do what’s right. It’s why we fight so fiercely to justify our actions. It’s why every side claims that they’re the defenders of democracy, they’re the champions of truth and morality.

But when someone from our side lies — especially when they lie so blatantly — and we choose to accept it instead of standing up for the truth, then we twist and contort that essential part of our souls that wants, above all else, to stand tall and upright in the light of the sun.

Such lies are an incredibly destructive force in the world. We can all see how they tear at the fabric of society, how they set us against each other. But it’s this tearing down of the inner human being, this darkening of our spiritual light, that is the real harm. And it’s this that must wake us up to the power and sanctity of the Word. If we don’t defend it’s sanctity, then ultimately all our other ideals will fall as well.

As the first UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, so beautifully wrote in his diary (which was posthumously published in the 1964 book, Markings):

Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.

To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.

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