I hope you had a fun, festive and relaxing Labor Day holiday, and it was a lot better than Katelyn Ogle's!
In case you missed it, Katelyn – daughter of Kevin, sister of Abigail, and the latest Ogle to enter the Oklahoma City news scene – became the subject of online ridicule and criticism from the right-wing social media echo chamber after a kind of flawed, kind of misleading story she reported for KFOR was aggregated into a very flawed, very misleading viral news story for Rolling Stone.
Here's a breakdown of what happened:
Last week, Katelyn filed this report for KFOR alleging that Patients overdosing on ivermectin are backing up rural Oklahoma hospitals and ambulances. Here's a tweet:
Patients overdosing on ivermectin backing up rural Oklahoma hospitals, ambulances https://t.co/aWuXExpKes
— KFOR (@kfor) September 2, 2021
Although the story was clickable, it lacked any real substance or data, and was built around statements made by one rural hospital doctor. In one snippet, he made very vague claims that even some gunshot victims "were having hard times getting to facilities" to be treated:
A rural Oklahoma doctor said patients who are taking the horse de-wormer medication, ivermectin, to fight COVID-19 are causing emergency room and ambulance back ups...
Dr. McElyea said patients are packing his eastern and southeastern Oklahoma hospitals after taking ivermectin doses meant for a full-sized horse, because they believed false claims the horse de-wormer could fight COVID-19.
“The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated,” he said.
I actually clicked on the story last week, and my thought after reading that was "No shit, Dr. Sherlock! Whether they've been shot with a gun – or ODed on heroin, horse dewormer or heavy hors d'oeuvres– anyone being admitted to the hospital right now is contributing to Oklahoma emergency room and ambulance backups!"
The clickbait artists at Rolling Stone had a much more profitable take.
Sensing a viral news story in the works, they took the doc's "gunshot victim" comment and twisted KFOR's report into their own spectacularly misleading report:
Gunshot victims left waiting as horse dewormer overdoses overwhelm Oklahoma hospitals, doctor says https://t.co/ke654AV6o1 pic.twitter.com/Is4nAsSOyA
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) September 3, 2021
I know Oklahoma is a place where The Onion headlines come to life, but that's ridiculous.
In Katelyn's article, the doctor never specifically said gunshot victims were left waiting as "horse dewormer overdoses overwhelmed hospitals." The social media interns for Rolling Stone who repackage and regurgitate other media outlets' content for a living should be ashamed for messing that up. For what it's worth, they should also get a bonus for delivering so much web traffic and user data to their website! Even if the story's false and misleading, Rolling Stone will still make money.
As the Rolling Stone story spread online, it caught the attention of right-wing media outlets, podcasters, propagandists, and other blue checkmark social media types. These people spend their days and nights attempting to refute factual news and information about Covid, so they weren't going to let a screw-up like this slip by them without exploiting it for all it's worth.
They quickly latched onto Rolling Stone's mistake, and as experts who specialize in creating their own misleading viral propaganda built on out-of-context quotes, isolated half-truths, and other distortions, used it to try to discredit media and perpetuate their tired Fake News narrative.
Even the OG of all conservative media propaganda outlets had a story about it:
Rolling Stone forced to issue an 'update' after viral hospital ivermectin story turns out to be false https://t.co/0451oEw5Cu
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 5, 2021
As criticism of the Rolling Stone article flooded around social media like a worm in a rural Oklahoman's belly, some people in the right-wing disinformation sphere focused their ire and attention towards Katelyn and KFOR.
If you search her name on Twitter, you'll find a lot of mean things written about her by some real people, and a lot of things written about her by some probably fake people, many of whom probably follow her sister. It's honestly hard to tell which is which.
Locally, The Sooner Tea Party accused her of launching a major global hoax.
Katelyn Ogle, a veteran journalist for KFOR television news in Oklahoma City, is said to have launched a major global hoax in the disinformation about pandemic treatment.
Her report from a few days ago went viral, even though she and most every other major global news agency, evidently never bothered to confirm the sole source of the wild narrative.
On the topic of spreading fake news and misinformation online, I'd like to commend the Sooner Tea Party for labeling Katelyn Ogle as a "veteran" journalist! I think she has like two or three years of experience working in TV news, so she's basically a regular old Linda Cavanaugh. Pretty soon she'll be judging people's trash or treasure.
Since the controversy hit, Katelyn has gone virtually silent on social media. I have to admit, that kind of worries me. In my 14.5 years of running this website, the one thing I've learned is there's nothing more dangerous than an Ogle scorned.
As I'm typing this, I bet the entire family is having an Oglemoot at their family citadel high atop Mt. Teleprompter outside Meeker. I can see Kevin, Kelly and Kent reading from the Ogle Scrolls, plotting their redemption, all while Abigail Ogle sits silently in the corner, sharpening her blade Late-breaking, reciting the names of the people who crossed her young sister, and fantasizing about their demise.
Or maybe they'll just ignore it and move on with their lives. One advantage of being an Ogle is that you can say or report whatever you want in this market and not have any accountability. And that's my two cents.
