Fox News does RFK Jr dirty

The conservative news outlet has a stronger moral compass than Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, our anti-vaccine health secretary, is a fan of measles. He calls the time he caught the disease a “great week.” He thinks it prevents heart disease and cancer. I wrote about RFK Jr’s love affair with the virus for The Atlantic recently.

Before he led our healthcare system, Kennedy called measles outbreaks fabricated:

“Measles outbreaks have been fabricated to create fear, in turn forcing government officials to “do something.”

His initial response to the deadly outbreak in Texas was, unsurprisingly, subdued.

Now Kennedy seems to have felt the need to “do something.” He has taken a second crack at the problem by writing an op-ed for Fox News. But he remains as disingenuous as ever.

The op-ed is a prime example of why I previously described Kennedy as an “excellent conspiracy theorist.” He’s an educated, articulate man with many facts and half-facts at his disposal. It’s true, for example, that vaccines are not the only reason measles mortality declined; sanitation and medical care mattered a lot. But his overall goal is always to discourage vaccination, never to encourage it.

In his essay, Kennedy strains to express some truth about the efficacy of the vaccine. He also fills a lot of space with vague rhetoric about the importance of public health. Kennedy devotes almost as much space to promoting good nutrition as the cure for measles as he does vaccination.

Yet many people will walk away thinking Kennedy endorsed vaccination. Here’s how the news outlet Axios described his op-ed:

Kennedy does not urge vaccination. He does list some benefits of the shot but also calls it a personal choice for parents to discuss with their doctor. It wouldn’t have been hard to say that people should get vaccinated. RFK Jr didn’t say that because we obviously know he doesn’t believe that.

Yet the headline of the op-ed does seem to recommend vaccination, calling it “crucial.”

Most people don’t know that authors do not write their own headlines. While I don’t know for sure, I think it’s safe to assume that Fox News wrote the content above, not Kennedy. RFK Jr does not call the MMR vaccine crucial anywhere in the body of the piece.

Fox News also provides this pull quote, which is from the article.

Here’s the quote in its actual full, milquetoast context.

Vaccination protects community members but the decision is a personal one? Huh?

Fox News selected the most important part of that paragraph for their pull quote. They perhaps felt an obligation to promote the vaccine more strongly than our health secretary did. I think that’s a good thing, obviously.

But now Kennedy is getting credit for a stance he did not take. He will be taken more seriously and be seen as reversing his long-held views. He has not done so. He’s previously acknowledged that the measles vaccine has efficacy. But he has been a staunch opponent of actually using it because he falsely attributes dangers to it (such as autism) and believes that measles is a harmless disease when treated with Vitamin A and chicken soup.

See this op-ed for what it is: just more subtle, effective anti-vaccine propaganda from America’s leading anti-vaxxer. Nutrition is nice. Vitamin A helps. But I don’t find it difficult to say you should also get vaccinated.

Thanks for subscribing,

Ben