Fake news is nothing unusual when it comes to the NBC News organization and its somewhat dimbulb offspring MSNBC. Where CBS will always have Dan Rather and the infamous ‘fake but true’ Texas Air National Guard papers, in CBS’s defense, Dan Rather actually believed the nonsense he was reporting. On the other hand, some of the most memorable events in NBC News history deal with reporting things that they knew not to be true even as they ran the stories.

Back in 1992, NBC’s Dateline ran a segment on the propensity of Chevy trucks to explode in crashes. Only to find that NBC’s crew had rigged incendiaries to detonate on command. Just to show the lack of integrity in American media, the producer and correspondent for this segment were fired and then quickly hired by other outlets (looking at you Inside Edition and CBS) where, for all we know, they continued their career of just making things up.

And, of course, there is Brian Williams, the Baron Munchausen, the Forrest Gump, of broadcast news.

Now they’ve gone further. NBC has manufactured a story and serialized the fabrication.

On May 14, NBC News reported that a contributor, a so-called virologist Joseph Fair, had contracted Chinese Lung Aids.

Dr. Joseph Fair, a virologist and epidemiologist who has been hospitalized with the coronavirus despite being in good health and taking precautions, said Thursday that he believes he contracted the virus through his eyes on a crowded flight.

Fair, 42, an NBC News contributor who has responded to multiple outbreaks around the world, got sick about three days after a flight to his home in New Orleans.

“I had a mask on, I had gloves on, I did my normal wipes routine … but obviously, you can still get it through your eyes,” Fair said on the “TODAY” show from his hospital bed. “And, of course, I wasn’t wearing goggles on the flight.

“That’s one of the three known routes of getting this infection that we just don’t pay a lot of attention to. We tend to pay attention to the nose and mouth, because that is the most common route,” he said. “But you know, droplets landing on your eyes are just as infectious.”

He said that the airline “had us packed in like sardines” and that, “instinctively, I probably should have gotten off.” But he didn’t.

Here he is on Chuck Todd’s psychodrama on June 14 describing his symptoms:

TODD: Joining me now are virologist Joseph Fair who recently recovered from COVID-19 himself and infectious disease physician Dr. Nahid Bhadelia of Boston University. Welcome back to Meet the Press to both of you. Dr. Fair, let me start with you because I would like you to share a little bit about your recovery from COVID-19. What should Americans take away from your experience?

DR. JOSEPH FAIR:

Well, first of all, you know, I did not have any underlying conditions. And I’m not a triathlete or anything like that. But I was generally very healthy, could run and exercise probably four or five times a week. That being said, I did not expect if I got COVID-19 that I would get that ill because I don’t have any of those underlying conditions, I’m 42 years old. So you wouldn’t think, clinically, that I would be one of those people that would get so very ill. I can say that that seven to eight days prior to me hospitalizing myself when I was doing the self-treatment, that was the worst I’ve ever felt. I probably spent 23 out of 24 hours in bed. And then, obviously, I developed the secondary pneumonia at the end. And so the struggle with breathing and everything else. So I was shocked at how severe my illness got without having those underlying conditions that we’ve discussed so many times. And so what I would take from that is, you know, everyone that’s younger, everyone that is going out without masks now and being very cavalier with that and ignoring this kind of ongoing pandemic, and we use the analogy and the band played on with HIV and its response in the early days, that’s really the analogy we should be using with Coronavirus right now to a much greater extent. And so those people that are young and think they’re invincible or people that just don’t think it’s going to affect them that greatly even if they do get it, I can say that my own experience was the complete opposite. I can’t say that I had a brush with death but it was enough to put me in the ICU for four days and in the hospital for six days.

By this time, it was known that Fair had tested negative for Flu Manchu at least four times and the odds of him ever having had it approached zero. And yet, Fair was allowed to go on a major news show and blather about how horrible the disease was based upon his own experience.

To make matters worse, NBC News allowed this guy to repeatedly appear on its shows and talk about his experience suffering from Kung Flu.

In June, NewsBusters found three Fair hits totaling 10 minutes and 40 seconds on MSNBC evening shows in which he discussed the virus and his faux experience. As for July, there was a lone entry from July 1’s The Last Word in the form of a 30-second soundbite from Today.

As Newsbusters reports, Fair was a mainstay of NBC’s Wuhan virus fearmongering.

NewsBusters found that Fair was a guest 38 times on MSNBC’s weekday evening shows between March 1 and July 10 for a total of 137 minutes with another five minutes covering his now-debunked coronavirus bout. MTP Daily led the way with 12 Fair appearances in this span with the 7:00 p.m. Eastern MSNBC Live in second at ten hits.

This story, naturally, was not discovered by our fearless firefighters in the media, it was Steve Krakauer of the Fourth Watch newsletter (follow on Twitter | sign up for the newsletter) who blew the whistle on the fraud in two of his bulletins dated June 17 and July 9.

What it points to is a more significant issue. Fair was part of a fraud carried out upon the American people. It was a deliberate fraud designed to influence a policy discussion in a way that was perceived to harm President Trump by portraying Wuhan virus as some uniquely dangerous threat to otherwise healthy people and which was so virulent that it could be contacted via the eyeballs. NBC knew the story was a fraud and not only failed to correct the story, but it also gave Fair additional air time to spread his bullsh**. The only question is, did Fair dream up the fake Wuhan infection, or did NBC? Or was it part of a strategy that was scripted as part of his hiring?