Alex Jones didn't just say there are chemicals in the water turning the frogs gay. Alex Jones said the government was deliberately putting chemicals into the water as part of a chemical warfare operation to increase the homosexual population and reduce birthrates, and that the frogs turning gay was the proof.
It doesn't matter that he was a little bit wrong about the actual effect of the chemicals on amphibian sexuality, he was very wrong about his actual claim, that being that gay people are bioweapons in a secret program of mass human genocide.
While Alex Jones was undoubtedly wrong on that one, I believe the source of his misinformation didn't come out of nowhere. Which is exactly what the parent comment was trying to illustrate. Take a few pieces of truth, fill the gaps with wild imagination and emotionally charged responses, and you get Alex Jones and his content.
Back in the 90s, US Air Force Research Laboratory was indeed working on a halitosis bomb that would do exactly that - turn those impacted by it gay.[0] As far as the wikipedia page goes, it seems like they didn't succeed in producing an actual halitosis bomb (and I have zero reason to believe otherwise, but I bet some Alex Jones supporters might disagree with me here), however it was included on their 3 pages long proposal paper for possible nonlethal chemical weapons. Which proves that there was some research on it and that the intended purpose of the hypothetical "gay bomb" was to use it as a nonlethal chemical weapon.
Major news sources reported on the Bush Administration's claims that Iraq had WMD, which is what they should have done, and which is much different than the implication in your statement, that the source of those claims was the media itself.
Maybe does some actual investigative journalism or put emphasis on the fact that the Bush administration claims were unproven? US media wouldn't uncritically report the statements of the Russian government as truth and a similar standard should be applied to the US government. It isn't like this is something they wouldn't have been able to do. Nancy Pelosi admitted she knew the truth back then.
> I was Ranking Member on the Intelligence Committee even before I became part of the leadership of Gang of Four. So, I knew there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq. It just wasn't there.
> They had to show us now - to show the Gang of Four all the Intelligence they had. The Intelligence did not show that that - that was the case. So, I knew it was a - a misrepresentation to the public[1][2].
