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+--- Thread: Article NYT: stop shilling for fake psychics + Anti-vaccine conferences are not jokes? (/thread-21403.html)
NYT: stop shilling for fake psychics + Anti-vaccine conferences are not jokes? - C C - Sep 22, 2026
New York Times: Stop shilling for fake psychics
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/nyt-dont-shill-for-fake-psychics/
INTRO: A recent article in the New York Times is, unfortunately, terrible journalism that ends up shilling for a fraudulent and exploitative industry. The author, Sarah Wildman, tells of her previous encounter with a medium through her unnamed cousin. Part of the subject was Wildman’s 14 year-old daughter who had died the year before. This is a massive conflict that compromises her objectivity. No editor should have let this article go through. Wildman herself admits. “Also, I did not really want to debunk it.” She wanted to believe - that makes her a vulnerable target, not an objective journalist. The essence of the article is that it really doesn’t matter if mediums are genuine or not... (MORE - details)
I attended an anti-vaccine conference. The joke ended quickly...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/09/22/dcs-anti-vaccine-conference-taught-me-painful-lesson/
EXCERPTS: I have a confession: When I arrived at the Grand Hyatt hotel in D.C. on Thursday to cover an anti-vaccine conference, my intention was to make fun of it. That was wrong.
To be clear, I have an unshakable faith in vaccines. [...] Most of it — including the keynote address from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — was the same deceptive talking points I have heard countless times.
Over the course of the day, however, I realized that treating those views with disrespect, wrong though they might be, would help no one. It would only feed into the resentment that created the anti-vaccine movement as it is today.
[...] My goal is not to sane-wash the views of the conference attendees. It is merely to point out that they are humans, which means they are vulnerable to the same sort of populist scapegoating that pervades much of U.S. politics.
[...] Casual media coverage of vaccine issues typically speeds past anti-vaccine claims by declaring them “false” or “discredited.” That can come off as dismissive, but it takes time and space for journalists to point out that rigorous studies have found no association between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Moreover, purveyors of false information often layer multiple claims on top of each other. Diving into any one of them can turn out to be a complicated rabbit hole.
[...] This sort of detail makes readers’ eyes glaze over, so reporters rarely spend time parsing it. That gives anti-vaccine activists room to claim that the traditional media — indeed the entire political establishment — is against them. ... That is what crushed me on Thursday — that sense of victimhood that nearly everyone in the conference shared... (MORE - missing details)