Imagine being the BBC and putting together a purported “fact check” in an effort to malign Joe Rogan and his podcast, only to wind up getting a majority of the fact check wrong – because the BBC’s “Reality Check team” managed to do just that with their February 1st report [1] trying to cash-in on the Rogan hate train.
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In the BBC’s purported “fact check,” they brought four alleged claims made on Rogan’s podcast over the past year that the BBC’s Reality Check team boasted that they had debunked.
In reality, the BBC debunked one sentence Rogan made in passing on one episode last August – while ignoring the full context of his statement in question. They then used one of their own back-linked articles to attack a claim made by a guest of Rogan’s back in June of last year, “fact checked” a statement made by Dr. Robert Malone that the BBC Reality Check team got wrong (a.k.a., the BBC spread medical misinformation), and then “fact checked” a claim that was never actually made on the podcast by erecting a strawman argument.
Claim #1
In the BBC’s article, the first thing they “fact checked” on Rogan’s podcast was “Claim: A vaccine can alter your genes” and then latched on to Rogan saying in passing last August that the COVID jab “is not a vaccine, this is essentially a gene therapy.”
When the BBC focuses in on that line alone, they’re correct – the COVID jabs aren’t by definition “gene therapy.” The BBC article points out that the COVID jab operates upon mRNA, with the outlet noting that the jab sends a “message to your cells is to turn the RNA into a piece of the virus’s spike protein.”
Yet, the irony is, Rogan even said in the same breath that the jabs do the aforementioned, per a PolitiFact article [3] that also took issue with his passive statement last August.
“This is really gene therapy,” Rogan said at the time. “It’s a different thing. It’s tricking your body into producing spike protein and making these antibodies for COVID. But it’s only good for a few months, they’re finding out now.”
Basically, the BBC selectively pointed out his opening sentence from back in August of 2021 was wrong but ignored his follow-up explanation about the “spike protein” which the BBC grandstanded their fact check upon.
Claim #2
Next in the BBC article, they decided to fact check “Claim: Ivermectin can cure Covid.”
So what the BBC homed in on was a single statement made by author and biology professor Bret Weinstein back on a June 2021 episode of Rogan’s podcast [4] where Weinstein said, “Ivermectin alone is capable of driving this pathogen to extinction.”
The BBC decided to try and debunk this assertion made by Weinstein by backlinking to one of their own articles from October of 2021 [5] where the BBC championed studies from various countries regarding the drug but brushed off other studies abroad as being “very low quality” or outright alleging some studies “had been clearly manipulated.” Not to mention, Ivermectin in even more recent studies has been showing an antiviral effect [6].
Claim #3
Per the BBC article, the third purported claim made on Rogan’s podcast they attacked was “Claim: If you get vaccinated after having had Covid, you’re at greater risk of harmful side effects.”
In this particular instance, the BBC’s Reality Check team wrote that “One of Mr. Rogan’s most controversial guests has been the virologist Robert Malone” and proclaimed that Dr. Malone’s claims that “people who are vaccinated after having Covid-19 are at greater risk of adverse side effects” was “misleading.”
Newsflash – BBC’s Reality Check team got this completely wrong, thereby actually spreading medical misinformation. And the irony here is, even the BBC admitted this was the case in their very own fact check by writing, “In one UK study, researchers found that vaccine after effects were more common in those who already had Covid.”
But Ben Johnson from The Daily Wire [8] even slammed the BBC harder regarding this horribly failed fact check, writing that “Numerous studies agree with Malone’s reported claim” while linking to a John Hopkins study [9], a British study [10], a U.S.-based study [11], and a Medrxiv study [12].
Claim #4
But perhaps the most absurd attempt at a fact check by the BBC is demonstrated when they went after “Claim: For young people, the health risks from the vaccine are greater than from Covid.”
This was a claim that was never made on Rogan’s podcast at all – the BBC’s Reality Check team literally erected a strawman argument to attack and then pompously proclaim victory that they fact checked something that was never said.
Rogan never uttered the words “the health risks from the vaccine are greater than from Covid” when it pertains to “young people.” Rogan specifically mentioned the risk of myocarditis, which is a huge departure from the broad term “health risks” as the BBC proclaimed.
While the BBC did quote that Rogan stated on one of his episodes, “I don’t think it’s true there’s an increased risk of myocarditis from people catching Covid-19 that are young, versus the risk from the vaccine,” the Reality Check team formulated an argument of the risks of myocarditis in all ages post COVID jab [13], where the BBC tried claiming victory by writing myocarditis “is considerably more common after a Covid infection than after vaccination.”
The funny thing is the very study that the BBC linked [13] showed that people under 40 had a 50% greater risk of developing myocarditis after being fully jabbed as opposed to after having contracted COVID. Rogan on his podcast specifically mentioned “young” people and not only did the BBC initially try framing this deceptively, they then went on to attack a claim a he didn’t make by ignoring his cited age demographic.
These missteps leave one wondering: Do these “fact checkers” read facts at all?