Gish galloping America. It’s now the favored technique used by demagogues masquerading as public servants, serving up a waterboarding of disinformation to interviewers just trying to get a question answered. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Gish galloping savant.
To Gish gallop is to offer up so many lies, half-truths, and outright conspiracies that the interviewer cannot keep up. It’s a real term, and believe it or not, it was not invented during this or the last presidential election cycle.
“Gish gallop” was actually named for a man named Duane Gish, who in the 1990s believed God created the earth in 6 days as the Bible says, in other words, a creationist who in debates with scientists overwhelmed the opponent with a flood of arguments, all of them false.
The disinformation flowed so fast and furious the debate opponent could not pick which one to refute and was forced to let many of them stand.
This brings me to Kennedy Jr. The environmental lawyer turned anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist whose name has given him just enough recognition to run for President on the Democratic ballot. He is polling around 15%, just enough to be a nuisance candidate, unlikely to win, and more popular among Republicans than his own party, but because his father and uncle John Kennedy are legends in American politics, the media cannot ignore him.
And anyone interviewing him is confronted with the Gish gallop of pseudo-science that has made Junior a hero among the anti-science, lock-up Fauci crowd. His wacko theories include that the 5G internet is breaking through the brain-blood barrier in people, causing mental illness, that anti-depressants are behind the rash of mass shootings, not guns, and that not only did the CIA kill Robert and John Kennedy, but they may also be out to kill him too.
And, of course, it all started with anti-vax, way before COVID. His theory — long debunked by every scientific magazine and journal from the American Medical Association to Lancet, (British journal) to the American Pediatrics Association is that mercury in vaccines causes more damage than good. He does not mention that the mercury that is poison in the fish we eat, is a totally different mercury compound used in vaccines. Plus it isn’t used in vaccines anymore, period.
Kennedy also ignores that only 9 COVID vaccine deaths have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control, while an estimated 20 million lives have been saved by the vaccine.
It’s also true that states with high vaccination rates have lower hospitalization and death rates than states with low vaccination numbers.
When interviewing Kennedy, it is imperative to have those facts on hand for real-time fact-checking.
But how to handle the Gish galloping? When confronted with one fact, too often Kennedy and others jump to another piece of disinformation. Some suggest that interviewers pick one big lie and thoroughly debunk it. That may help viewers, listeners, and readers see that if the politician is willing to mislead on his or her main point, they are likely to mislead on others.
And, in fact, a good follow-up would be, “Wait… if we just showed that you were wrong about your key premise, how can we believe you about this one?”
Others have argued that the best tactic is just to ignore conspiracy advocates. Not interview them at all. That is difficult with a Kennedy, because the name alone carries authority and gains followers.
My advice remains “Be prepared with facts”. And tape these interviews as often as possible. Avoid going live with serial liars so that fact-checking can be done after each important misstep.
And finally, call Kennedy and other mass misinformation carriers out directly. Explain to your audience what a Gish galloper is and label him or her as such to their face.
You may not get a second interview, but often one is enough.
