The right to call out misinformation | Opinion | morgancountycitizen.com – Morgan County Citizen

The headline on Fred Johnsons column in last weeks Citizen declared, Whole lot of misinformation going around. How true that headline is, and how apt it applies to the misinformation that Fred Johnson spreads around weekly.

Usually, I just roll my eyes at Johnsons poppycock and move on under the admittedly optimistic assumption that well-informed readers recognize that his tirades constitute nothing but a mish-mash of misleading right-wing talking points. This week, however, I felt moved to reply since the very opening sentences of his column (July 22) began with easily debunkable historical misinformation.

Johnson wrote: The Biden administration has invented a new word. The word is misinformation. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary site, the first use of the word misinformation dates from 1604. Ill admit that Joe Biden is old but hes not THAT old. In 1930, 12 years before Joe Biden was born, the American Public Health Association, published a cartoon showing a man labeled Anti-Vaccinationist about to step off a cliff labeled misinformation into a sea labeled smallpox. So much for Biden inventing a new word. So much for Fred Johnsons credibility.

Johnson cites Tucker Carlson to define misinformation. Having Carlson define misinformation is like having the Kardashians define class and dignity. Johnsons two muddled paragraphs about the Cuba demonstrations seem to imply that Biden blamed the recent demonstrations on COVID. Only by using the misinformation tactic of taking words out of context, something that Carlson does routinely, can one make that claim. Biden actually said, We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cubas authoritarian regime.

Johnson then moves on to draw information from the American Association of Physicians & Surgeons, an extreme right-wing association that has been purveying misinformation since 1943. As of 2020 the AAPS managed fewer than five thousand members from the nations more than a million medical doctors. Well before the COVID pandemic, the AAPS called Medicare evil, opposed the establishment of Medicaid, and ignored overwhelming scientific evidence about the effectiveness of the measles vaccine. (See The Atlantic, Feb. 25, 2020). If you think that Medicare is evil and you like measles, perhaps you are Fred Johnsons intended audience.

Johnson repeats the AAPS position that there is no Constitutional authority for the federal government to be involved in medicine. Ill make a deal with Fred: I wont cite Constitutional scholars on medical matters if he wont rely on the AAPS for constitutional interpretation. The AAPS and Johnson neglect to tell you that the federal government has been involved in health and medicine throughout more than two centuries of American history and that the U.S. Supreme Court has never agreed with AAPS assertions that such involvement is unconstitutional.

For example, the predecessors of the U.S. Public Health Service, which acquired its present name in 1912 under a Republican president, date to 1798. Republican U.S. Grant appointed the first surgeon general in 1871. The Meat Inspection Acts and the Pure Food and Drug Act (which led to the FDA) date from 1906 under Republican Teddy Roosevelt. Since WWII, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act have all stood Constitutional challenges in court, albeit with the exception of a few details not affecting the fundamental issue of the federal governments authority to be involved in medicine and health. The AAPS may think that all of these historic programs were unconstitutional, but scarcely anyone else other than Fred Johnson and Tucker Carlson would agree.

Johnson wrote that the Biden administration wants to send agents door-to-door to promote vaccination. His use of the scare word agents falsely implies that these door knockers would be federal employees when, in fact, they would be volunteers. Johnson parrots the AAPS accusation that encouraging people to get vaccinated would violate medical confidentiality and Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable search and seizure. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no violation of privacy or confidentially involved. The hope of the proposal is that people will respond positively to personal appeals from volunteers who urge them to get vaccinated for their own good and the good of others. However, residents remain perfectly free to tell volunteers that their vaccination status is none of your business or to just ignore the knock on the door in the first place. Ipso facto, no issue of privacy or confidentiality ensues.

The Biden-proposed campaign to encourage vaccination is modeled after the thousands of mothers who went door-to-door during the early days of the March of Dimes, which Franklin Roosevelt founded in 1938. Incidentally, the success of the March of Dimes in raising money for medical research helped lead to the polio vaccine. That is why FDR s image has since 1946 been on the dime. I wonder if Johnson thinks that is unconstitutional too.

To be sure, Johnson is correct that the First Amendment prohibits governmental entities from censoring speech, even if the content is factually incorrect or misleading. (That is provided, of course, that the words dont constitute triggers to action like the proverbial false cry of fire in a crowded auditorium.)

Fred Johnson, the AAPS, Tucker Carlson, and their ilk are free to continue to disseminate misinformation as they have been doing all along. However, contrary to what Johnson writes, the 1st Amendment does not prohibit governmental agencies from countering misinformation by disseminating accurate information. Nor does it prohibit the government from encouraging others to do the same.

Most importantly, the 1st Amendment guarantees private entities and private individuals the right to call out poppycock when they see it. Im exercising that right today.

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The right to call out misinformation | Opinion | morgancountycitizen.com - Morgan County Citizen