Mediaite’s Colby Hall Calls Out ‘Carnival Barker’ Elon Musk For Fueling Twitter Gang-Up On Vaccine Scientist
Mediaite Founding Editor Colby Hall took Elon Musk to task for inflaming the social media uproar Dr. Peter Hotez had to contend with over the weekend.
Hotez, a vaccine scientist and microbiology professor at Baylor College of Medicine, was targetted by the anti-vax Twitter mob after criticizing Joe Rogan for holding a podcast interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist. Rogan responded by challenging Hotez to debate Kennedy on his podcast, and as the situation bubbled up on Twitter, Musk decided to insert himself into the squabble by declaring Hotez “afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong.”
Hotez was confronted at his home in connection with the blow-up, and he later explained he has no interest in a spectacle starring himself and RFK Jr’s scientific misinformation.
As Hall broke down all of this for NewsNation on Monday, he described Musk as “a bit of a carnival barker” who’s still trying to market Twitter as a platform that embraces free speech. Hall also acknowledged the public craving for a retrospective about where scientists were right and wrong as they guided the world through the coronavirus pandemic.
When Marni Hughes asked if he agrees that Twitter users “ganged up” on Hotez to force him into the debate, Hall agreed “he’s kind of getting bullied a little bit here,” comparing it to the animus expressed by critics of Anthony Fauci:
You know, he pointed out, he said in science, we don’t typically do debates. What we do is we usually write scientific debate papers. One typically he doesn’t debate science. And he’s right. And I think he’s right to say, ‘Look, I’m not going to get involved in this sort of like back and forth because nothing good will come from it.’
He also said, you know, he claims that over 200,000 people died as a result of the conspiracies against vaccines with the Omicron variant. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think, yes, there were some bad things that happened out of the vaccines, but a lot of good came from it also. And the truth is always somewhere in between.
So, you know, it’s sort of — I feel bad for him. But also, you know, we should be willing to discuss the things that we got right and got wrong in the past.
On the subject of Musk’s involvement, Hall argued, “I don’t think Elon Musk is serving himself, or us, very well with the way that he’s getting involved in this, because he’s doing a very one-sided approach.”
He’s serving him so well because, again, he’s a carnival barker. He wants to get people to talk about debates that are going on on Twitter. But like, I don’t know how responsible that is. Media in general and people in social media can cherry-pick any single detail and say ‘Aha! We got you!’ But that doesn’t really foster a good sort of meaningful, earnest conversation that has the truth in mind.
So do people need to be more responsible on social media? Yes. Do owners of social media need to be more responsible? Absolutely. Will they be? I’m not going to hold my breath on that.
Watch above via NewsNation.
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