Media Conspiracy or Out of Control Group Think?

The above video is of an interview that was uploaded to YouTube on January 16^th 2018. Cathy Newman, a Channel 4 News reporter, interviewed Jordan Peterson, a professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, who has attracted a massive following by telling people to ‘clean up their room’ and ‘tell the truth.’

After this interview was posted it immediately went viral, the original YouTube video has been viewed 2,900,851 times with 114,597 up votes and 2,417 down votes and 55,324 comments at the time of this writing.

Shortly after this interview, claims were made by Channel 4 that ‘threats’ have been made against Newman and that they were bringing in additional security. It was at this time that the media smear machine went to work, attempting to paint Peterson, through the actions of his ‘followers’ as a sexist, misogynist ‘alt-right’ bigot.

These media outlets are attempting to use character assassination in order to attempt to salvage their narrative, even if they have to mislead to do so.

The Threats

According to Ben de Pear, the editor of Channel 4 News, Cathy Newman has been on the receiving end of “vicious misogynistic abuse, nastiness, and threat” and that it is “[A] terrible indictment of the times we live in.”

According to the Independent, security experts have been hired by Channel 4 and they are considering police involvement.

When asked for proof of these threats very little is forth coming. According to The Daily Mail the ‘abuse’ included comments such as ‘RIP Cathy Newman’ and ‘Cathy Newman we know where you live.’

That last statement seem ominous to be sure, but no screen shots or images are provided as proof. They go on to say that more than 500 postings have been made calling Newman a bitch. The Daily Mail also claims that Newman’s 13-year-old daughter found a pornographic mock-up on Instagram of her mother with Dr. Peterson.

They go on to claim that Peterson’s “admirers” attacked Newman by describing her in a comment as the “Low IQ Left Establishment” and saying that she should be “ashamed of such a catastrophic interview.”

The Daily Mail continues saying that critical comments were expected but the death threats have caused serious alarm. Yet they do not provide any examples of these death threats. No quote is mentioned nor a screen shot shared.

The Threats seem to amount to people saying mean things to her on the internet.

The Headlines

These are some of the headlines describing this story. Clearly they are misleading, either for ideological reasons or for clicks.

The Independent says that the abuse was misogynistic and that it is all just a backlash against the #MeToo movement.

 

The Daily Mail calls the interview a ‘row’ and calls Peterson an ‘anti-feminist.’ The interview was tough and could be called a row for embellishment but to label Peterson as an anti-feminist is just wrong and has zero evidence to back it up.

The Sun also calls it a ‘row’ and calls Peterson a ‘controversial academic.’ He covered what makes him controversial in the interview.

Huffington Post states that Newman is threatened after the interview. It is miss leading because it is unclear what kind of threats are made, who is making them, and proof that the threats have actually been made.

The headline does not say allegations of threats, rather they just state it as fact.

The Guardian defends Peterson.

 

The Star simply reports that security has been bolstered.

 

One article analyzes the ‘abuse’ and finds it lack luster and worst against Peterson and his supporters.

 

The Mirror says that Peterson didn’t agree that the gender pay gap is unfair. This is very misleading because what Peterson took issue with was the degree to which sexism determines the pay gap as opposed to other factors such as women’s own interest.

Add Mirror:

 

The Copy and Paste Job

While reading these articles and writing my own I noticed a pattern. A few of the articles used the same phrases and I am not talking about using the same quotes.

Several articles call Peterson a Controversial Psychologist or Professor (The Star, Huffington Post, The Mirror). I first thought that they were just writing along similar lines because they were all writing about the same story.

That is until I came across this line from The Star “Peterson is best known for refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns for transgender and non-binary people who request them.”

This line jumped out at me because it is misleading and untrue. I also had a suspicion that is had heard it somewhere else. A quick check of my notes showed that I had written down this quote from a Huffington Post article.

Not a similar quote, the exact same quote. I pulled the article back up and started rereading side by side with The Star article. They were the exact same. Not similar but word for word the exact same (below are screen shots of the text from each article side by side).

I do not know if this is just lazy journalism, two media outlets sharing the same article or a collaborative effort by two media companies to push the same narrative. Something tells me it is a bit of all three.

History Repeats

This is not the first time we have seem media outlets all run the same story from the same perspective, pushing toward the same goal with little or no regard for facts or evidence. We have seen this with President Trump over and over again.

It is also not the first time we have seen the Progressive’s push a narrative in an attempt to further their ideology that turns out to be a lie. The recent hijab cutting in Canada that elicited a response from their Prime Minister Justin Trudeau turned out to be a hoax just to name one.

This time they were pushing to smear Jordan Peterson because of his sound defeat of their ‘social justice’ view of the world, which divides everyone into victims or oppressors. They want to distract from one of the big truths revealed in this interview. That Freedom of Speech is a right and should be protected and the ‘right’ to not be offended is nothing more than a thin excuse for authoritarian control and censorship.