Back in March, CNSNews.com published a commentary by Jim Meehan — a anti-vaxxer, QAnon-supporting doctor in Oklahoma with no professional experience in epidemiology (he’s an ophthalmologist by trade) — promoting that untrue claim that healthy people should not wear masks to protect themselves from coronavirus and the utterly false claim that “Surgical and cloth masks do nothing to prevent viral transmission.” We detailed Meehan’s conspiratorial, medically unsound views at the time and wondered why CNS went full WND in giving Meehan a platform.
Months later, CNS is still promoting Meehan’s medically unsound column on Twitter. Multiple times a week, CNS’ Twitter account has promoted Meehan’s false claims. For instance, here are the days CNS has done so over the past month or so:
Reminder: Meehan’s commentary was published in March, and it has been utterly discredited. It’s hihgly unusual for any Twitter user to promote an old article without a news hook — particularly one that claims to be a “news” organization. And it’s an especially bad look for a “news” organization seeking credibility, since this appears to prove that CNS isn’t really about reporting “news” at all.