Is San Francisco on Fire???

September 13, 2020 8:24pm

The above tweet from The New York Times is a good example of how the so-called "news" media engages in deceptive propaganda.

Where is that fire? Did you think San Francisco?

What bridge is that? Did you think Golden Gate Bridge?

The words in the tweet don't say where it is other than "the Bay Area in Northern California." So if you thought the fire was that close to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, you would not be alone. And, based on that tweet, such a belief would not be unreasonable. But it would be false.

The bridge in this photo is the Bidwell Bar Bridge over Lake Oroville which is 162 MILES FROM SAN FRANCISCO! It's 78 miles north of Sacramento, which means it is nowhere near "the Bay Area in Northern California" as The New York Times described it.

Twitter allows 280 characters per tweet. That tweet used 177. The New York Times had 103 more characters it could have used to accurately report the bridge's (and thus the fire's) location. So, why didn't it? Because they wanted to deceive you! They knew the Bidwell Bar Bridge looks very similar to the Golden Gate Bridge. They knew a fire that close to San Francisco would be much more alarming than a fire in the relatively rural Butte County 162 miles away. They knew most people would not do any further reading to learn details. They knew people would be left with a false impression of the reality of California's fires. And that was their goal.

The tweet's deception was deliberate, disgusting, and disgraceful.

You can verify the accuracy of my post by viewing the original tweet at https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1303770185246150658