Have you ever seen a person get so mad over being fact-checked that they start having a meltdown on Twitter?
Well, that’s exactly what happened to MSNBC host and author of the book “Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking” Mehdi Hasan.
This all began after comedian Bill Maher exposed the media for refusing to cover the black-on-black crime epidemic. Hasan spent an entire segment calling Maher a racist:
"White people kill other white people at almost the same rate black people kill other black people & yet you never hear anyone complaining about 'white on white crime'. These aren't points of sage wisdom from Maher. They are classic racist dog whistles."pic.twitter.com/VZlCoqfet9
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 28, 2023
On April 28, Hasan tweeted out a claim that white-on-white crime stats are almost identical to black-on-black crime numbers.
He was quickly shot down by Community Notes users, with a correction being posted below his tweet. This correction referred to FBI statistics that showed that the rate of black-on-black killings (53.38/million) was ~5.3x higher than that of white-on-white (10.03/million) in the US in 2019.
Black killers killed 89% of black victims, while white killers killed 79% of white victims.
Hasan was none too pleased with these facts and started lashing out, claiming it was all a MAGA plot.
He was further corrected on his false depiction of Community Notes, which works by looking for agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in their past ratings.
*Rate* and *frequency* are two very different things, @mehdirhasan, and you know this. Which is why nearly 50% of homicide victims or black despite representing only 14% of the population.
You are a professional liar. https://t.co/DkiJkuXKfo pic.twitter.com/fAODg8zGKe
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) April 28, 2023
It’s clear that Hasan doesn’t take kindly to people disagreeing with him or pointing out his factual inaccuracies.
It’s a shame, too, because the statistics show that crime is a real problem in the US, especially in inner cities.
It’s hard to solve this problem if we refuse to acknowledge it, and the liberal media’s failure to even admit reality just adds to the number of people dying on the streets.
If you had any doubt that @CommunityNotes has become another weapon of the right on Musk’s Twitter, see the BS community note added to my Bill Maher clip, after MAGA folks demanded it. It makes a point that is irrelevant to the one I am making (re intraracial ‘rates* of killing.) pic.twitter.com/GXZrli4Lx9
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 29, 2023
I’m loving the “Community Notes” feature on Twitter. It allows readers to fact-check and add context to potentially misleading tweets, which is a great thing.
We need more of this kind of discourse in the media.
We can’t let the likes of Mehdi Hasan get away with spreading false information without being called out on it. Thankfully, this time he didn’t get a pass.
