Rebecca Nay interviewed David Crowe fairly, asking questions and listening, without interrupting or indicating any sort of bias. The bias was edited in afterwards.
First of all, only some of what David said was included in the final broadcast, and the one member of “AIDS Truth” who deigned to talk to Rebecca, Brian Foley, of Los Alamos, was given the advantage of responding to David’s recorded interview without David having the right to respond. Despite this, the comments speak for themselves although it would have been fairer to allow David to rebut the distortions of Brian Foley and the representative of the Cascade AIDS project who was given the last word.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Los Alamos National Laboratory, they are the people who brought us the atomic bomb. For a while they seemed to be looking for peacetime work but the Bush/Obama presidencies have revitalized the war industry enough that this no longer appears necessary.
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I recently wrote to the interviewer, Rebecca Nay,
“Rebecca; First of all, thank you for conducting the interview with me fairly and dispassionately. I would like to ask if you have the raw MP3 of the entire interview with me for my records, I would appreciate a copy.
Not everything was perfect, however. You introduced journalistic bias in three different ways. (1) You used the term ‘denialist’ with increasing fervor throughout the interview, particularly when you were talking to Brian and Michael Kaplan and in other ways you made it clear who you were siding with. No pretense of neutrality except at the beginning. (2) You did not run the entire interview with me but picked certain pieces that you or Brian felt would be easiest to counter. (3) You allowed Brian and Michael to respond to my interview without giving me time to rebut. This allowed them to make claims without fear of contradiction.
One example. Brian Foley claimed that HIV has been isolated, but he did not say purified, the word I used. Dogmatists like Brian do not mind distorting the term ‘isolation’ beyond recognition (look it up in the dictionary and you will not find anything close to the definition used by virologists who are actually never separating a virus from its surroundings) but they rarely do the same to the term ‘purification’. What does this mean? Well, Brian was admitting that HIV has never been purified, but by using the word ‘isolation’, which has already been debased, he thought that you wouldn’t notice the subtle displacement.
It would show integrity if you would have me back for 15 minutes and allow me to respond to some of the most egregious errors and distortions.
I understand that your bias probably arose out of fear, fear of the consequences of allowing a truly open dialog, fear of the criticism you would get from AIDS activists and doctors who, of course, have a vested financial interest in not rocking the boat, fear of the loss of funding of your station. I can understand, but not accept.
However, despite the flaws, I am glad you allowed me the opportunity to speak and give the ideas of rethinkers, not denialists, an airing. I think for a lot of people the obvious bias you showed will strengthen my arguments.
Regards, David Crowe”
Rebecca wrote back:
“Hi David,
You are correct the show was biased on my part. In an ideal setting, I would have preferred a live debate with no commentary from myself. However, I could not find ANYBODY that was willing to do so. Hell, Michael Kaplan was a last minute fill in because I simply could not find the folks that wanted to bother to be on the same show with you or anyone else from RA. It put me in a tough position because as you correctly pointed out, I am biased. When it came down to it, I had to take the unedited material and try and make a show out of it. When push came to shove, I could not in good conscience air your points without some sort of refutation, so I did the best with what I had. With the finalized piece, I paid close attention to make sure that your points were complete and not taken out of context. I hope I was at least successful in that matter. In the end I cannot let you “have the last word” so to speak because then I am doing nothing more than promoting your message, which for many reasons you already know, I cannot do.
Again thank you for your time.”
David and listeners,
I have a bit of history to tell too.
Rebecca Nay sends this to Alive and Well’s general mail box. “I am a producer for Out Loud. A queer culture radio show produced from a community radio station here in Portland, Oregon. I am looking to interview someone with scientific credentials who can speak on your dissenting views on HIV / AIDS.” which I then forwarded to David.
My inquiring mind wanted to know why a cross gendered HIV positive queer culture type person would be interested. I asked and received this reply.
“Thank you Brian for your interest in my past media work. I have known about the HIV denialist movement for a while and wanted to learn more. I will confess that I am a skeptic. I have been positive for over ten years and on meds for most of it. While I am not convinced the meds have “saved my life” so to speak, I am also not convinced that abstaining is a good idea either. What turns me off however, is the vitriol that I have encountered from folks in the mainstream medical community for simply being willing to speak with you folks, regardless of whether I believe you or not.”
Folks that know me, know well that I often talk about my first hand knowledge and experiences with gay men on anti-HIV medicine, the long term kind, like Rebecca (10 years) Keep in mind however, that the damaging effects of these medications are well documented to have mild to severe neurological effects on those that take them. For these people, the duplicity of thought is too much to handle, too much to consider. Too much have a reversal on, of who one is–one’s own core deep down inside belief. Admitting they’ve made a mistake is all too frightening. So instead of an understanding, enlightenment or even transcending, it becomes imperative for one to have such bias. The side effects of drugs prevent this. For the treatment naive, I’ve found this to be much less of a problem.
So Rebecca, if you’re reading this. Please stop damaging yourself and get you head out of the cesspool.
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