A far-right conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton’s failing health appears to be making its way from the deepest recesses of the right-wing echo chamber and into the mainstream political press.
At a campaign stop in Cleveland, Ohio on Monday, the Democratic nominee for president weathered a coughing fit shortly after taking the stage. Aides blamed on seasonal allergies, and Clinton joked it was an allergic reaction to her opponent, Republican nominee for president Donald Trump. She then went on to give her speech, which focused on criticism of Trump.
On Tuesday, it’s Clinton’s coughing fit — rather than the contents of her speech — that’s being reported as the most relevant news in several mainstream media outlets.
“Hillary Clinton fights back coughing attack” reads the headline from NBC News. CNN frontlined the cough alongside her joke: “Clinton during coughing fit: ‘Every time I think about Trump I get allergic.’”
Hillary Clinton Struggles to Fight Back Coughing Attack https://t.co/9tuHL6BVcK
— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) September 5, 2016
In reporting on Clinton’s coughs as if they are newsworthy, the media is falling prey to a pervasive right-wing myth that Clinton isn’t healthy — and, by giving it legitimacy, ultimately helping it spread.
Conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s ill health have been ricocheting around the right-wing echo chamber for months. Driven by widely-debunked bloggers like Jim Hoft and 9/11 Truther sites like Infowars, speculation about Clinton’s health appeared on sites like Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report and Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. Based on snippets of extremely dubious evidence — a cough, Clinton wearing glasses, Clinton leaning on stools occasionally — a theory spread that Clinton was somehow hiding a serious health problem, despite her having released clean bill of health from her physician (one far more detailed than the one released by her older opponent, Donald Trump).
As Trump began flagging in the polls, his campaign eagerly seized on the conspiracy theory, even going so far as to claim that Hillary Clinton was suffering from serious brain damage on MSNBC.
Claims that Clinton is suffering from ill health have been repeatedly debunked. Nonetheless, they’ve spread quickly from the worst corners of the right-wing internet and into the mainstream. By reporting on a coughing fit as if it’s important news for voters to have — without any context about where the idea that Clinton is unhealthy comes from — NBC and CNN are playing right into conspiracy theorists’ hands.
“What these people on the right are trying to do is they’re trying to get these things that they deeply believe, even if they’re not factual, and move them into the mainstream media,” Donna Halper, an associate professor of Communication and Media Studies at Lesley University, previously told ThinkProgress about the spread of the conspiracy.
And, troublingly, once conspiracy theories like this take root, they’re incredibly hard to dismiss. Research from Dartmouth shows that exposure to a false story, even if it’s immediately and soundly debunked by the facts, can actually work just to further reinforce the false story.
So in this case, while Clinton’s cough is probably just a cough, the news coverage of it is what is actually insidious. By merely suggesting that there might be something to see, news outlets are pointing voters down a rabbit-hole specifically engineered to lead them astray, and from which no amount of facts or context might be able to pull them back.
It’s not hard to see the reinforcing effect that media reports can have — and how they’re being exploited for political gain. Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, tweeted a jubilant article on Monday from conservative site The Dally Caller about Clinton’s recent coughing attack.
Trump, however, isn’t satisfied with coverage so far. Mid-morning on Tuesday, he weighed in on Twitter saying that the mainstream media hadn’t covered the attack — despite the fact that they clearly have.
Mainstream media never covered Hillary’s massive “hacking”
or coughing attack, yet it is #1 trending. What’s up?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2016