In a rare fact check of a press corps colleague, NBC’s Peter Alexander steps up to correct misinformation from Fox News White House stooge Peter Doocy, who claimed the Surgeon General had a secret list of twelve people who were responsible for spreading coronavirus and vaccine disinformation on social media.
“So these twelve people you have on a list,” Doocy starts, “twelve individuals, do they know that somebody at the Surgeon General’s office is going through their profile?”
“I’ll be happy to get you the citation of where that comes from,” Psaki responds. (Here it is: it’s from a public report released in May called “The Disinformation Dozen” by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an independent group that is in no way affiliated with the administration or the US Surgeon General. The report found that just 12 people propagated 65% of the social media disinformation that sprang up online.) “There’s no secret list.”
“About the twelve individuals that are on that [garbled],” Alexander pipes up as the next scrum for a question starts, “that’s not from the White House. I don’t have the source in front of me, but we’ve credited it as well.”
[Editor’s note: an earlier version of this story misidentified the reporter who force-fed Peter Doocy the correct information. It is Peter Alexander of NBC News. Thanks to DrTxsassenach for the correction.]