News media creates entirely fictional cause for couple’s suicide deaths

News media creates entirely fictional cause for couple’s suicide deaths

Here is how the story appeared:

A New York couple upset over their rising health care costs jumped to their deaths this week, leaving a note that they could no longer pay to treat their medical issues.

 

The suicide took place in New York City’s Murray Hill neighborhood early on Friday, the New York Post reported. The couple was both in their 50s, the report noted, and they were found dead after having jumped from a building between Park and Madison avenues in an upscale part of the city.

This story was distributed nationwide. It is also an outright lie.

Two days later the NY Post story has been completely rewritten. (Somehow the archive of the earlier story has been changed to the revised story, below.) But here is a screen capture of their FB page, which they have not updated:

Clicking on the FB page link, however, goes to the newly revised version of the story.

The NY Post now writes (having erased their previous story versions):

A law enforcement source at the scene told The Post that authorities at first believed that the couple struggled with health care costs. But an NYPD spokesman said later that there was no mention of medical-cost struggles in the notes.

The health care costs meme was bogus, a figment of someone’s imagination and the media fell for it because it met their narrative that the ACA is wonderful, has no problems, and attempts to change it would cause people to die.This was nothing more than a lame attempt by the NY Post to propagandize the news.

The bogus version of the story – suicides due to health care costs – was picked up and disseminated nationwide. A day later, the local news has corrected the story but the nationally distributed fictional news story will live on forever.

UPDATE: BET posts a fake correction, loaded with political overtones, falsely attributing the source of “health costs” to a Twitter user and destroying BET’s credibility on any subject forever. Unbelievable. The news media has killed itself and it was not due to health care costs.

And of course, the bogus version was then widely shared on social media, with each share presenting its own propaganda spin – as in this small sampling:

Why on earth does anyone believe a single word from the media? Why? Since the paper cited a police source for this, why believe the word of a police officer anymore either? We are now surrounded by propaganda and propagandists 24 x 7 to the point that absolutely nothing can be trusted anymore. Nothing at all.

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