"Republicans pounced."
It is such a worn journalistic trope that it has become the object of mockery whenever some brave but foolish member of the media dares to use it yet again. But what if the subject who supposedly pounced is not even a Republican? Well, that is apparently no problem for the Philadelphia Inquirer which conveniently relabeled the person in question, in this case Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as a Republican via the use of blatant misinformation despite the reporters piously lecturing the readers about, yes, misinformation.
This mighty feat of stupendous hypocrisy was performed on Friday by Aubrey Whelan and Henry Savage in "How two deaths in a Pennsylvania measles outbreak led to a clash between Gov. Josh Shapiro and RFK Jr."
Let us now pounce on the pounced quote in question:
President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Kennedy, pounced on the missing details the next day to spread misinformation. He wrote on X that the deaths may have been “fabricated” by the Shapiro administration and said in a television interview that “they cannot find any measles deaths in Lancaster County.”
Speaking of "misinformation," here are the two places in the story in which RFK Jr is identified as a Republican starting with the subtitle: "Shapiro, a Democrat, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Republican U.S. Health secretary, have clashed over the state's announcement of two deaths associated with a growing measles outbreak."
The other blatant example of political label misinformation about RFK Jr being a Republican, which a quick ten second online search would reveal as utterly false, came in the second paragraph of the story:
For the last three days, Shapiro, a Democrat, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Republican heading the federal Department of Health and Human Services, have clashed over what the state has disclosed about the deaths and the consequences of Kennedy’s longtime anti-vaccination activism.
To add to the extreme hypocrisy of the Philadelphia Inquirer reporters was this little sermonette about spreading misinformation:
Soon misinformation and innuendo were spreading online out of the seemingly contradictory and limited details being disclosed by state officials, the local coroner’s office, and federal health leaders — all with their own political affiliations at a time when the safety of the measles vaccine increasingly divides Democrats and Republicans.
Perhaps the Philadelphia Inquirer should consider dropping the "pounced" shtick whose overuse has made it laughable and replace it with something more original such as "exploiting" which Politico recently accused RFK Jr. of doing in this same Pennsylvania measles scandal.
