NBC News99%

100 million Americans facing dangerous wildfire smoke 97%

7/18/2026, 12:35:35 AM

Topics: Video
Keywords: Youtube

BS Summary: This video contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Negativity Bias, and Hasty Generalization, with Availability Heuristic as the most egregious example at 40.1% saturation with 136 hits. Analysis detected 1,337 faulty-reasoning hits from 339 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 96% and a BS Rank of 97% (536 of 17,632 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 97.00% of the video peer group.

100 million Americans from Minnesota to South Carolina facing dangerous smoke 
from the Canadian wildfires. 
The Washington Monument surrounded by smoke. 
A haze over downtown Baltimore. People masking up in Philadelphia. 
>> It's really hard to breathe, especially in the afternoon. It becomes uh even worse. 
>> In Cleveland, they postponed tonight's Guardians Pirates baseball game because of it. 
The DC government cancelling its outdoor activities and closing outdoor pools. 
I shot this video as I landed at Washington Reagan this morning. 
Canadian smoke hanging low. The president's helicopter lifting off in a haze. 
The air quality here considered unhealthy. 
My eyes have been red and itchy all day. 
I've been coughing. Health experts say if you're outside for any period of time, you should wear an N95 mask. 
Chicago and Detroit both choking on smoke that put air quality readings in the hazardous range. 
EMS respiratory distress calls surging. 
>> Look, this is pretty unprecedented. We shattered records yesterday. 
>> Georgetown Meds Dr. Helen Dakota telling me 
>> so this is a red alert air quality situation which means that everyone can feel symptoms of the poor air quality and this includes shortness of breath, 
chest tightness, wheezing. With nearly 200 fires now burning in Ontario alone, 
Toronto silhouetted against an orange sky with predictions the fires could burn into the fall. That smoke making 
some wild scenes out there. Tom Costello joins us now live from Washington. Tom, 
you need to mask up. Are others heeding the warnings as well? 
>> Yeah, there are a lot more people out here. If they're out here, a lot of them are wearing masks. Listen, we just checked. We're right now at a at an air quality index reading of 185. 
It's been going up. 
When you go over 200, you're in very unhealthy. 
But Tom, yesterday we have multiple cities plus 500. 
So, this index has been really, really in a very 
dangerous position and place for the last couple of days. 
Confirmation Bias
11.2%
Anchoring Bias
0%
Availability Heuristic
40.1%
Representativeness Heuristic
5.9%
Hindsight Bias
3.8%
Overconfidence Bias
16.8%
Framing Effect
17.1%
Loss Aversion
3.2%
Status Quo Bias
0%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Optimism Bias
0%
Pessimism Bias
14.7%
Negativity Bias
36.6%
Self-Serving Bias
3.5%
Fundamental Attribution Error
0%
Actor-Observer Bias
0%
In-Group Bias
0%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Halo Effect
3.5%
Horn Effect
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Recency Bias
26.3%
Primacy Effect
12.1%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Straw Man
0%
Appeal to Authority
26.8%
False Dilemma
14.2%
Slippery Slope
6.5%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Hasty Generalization
36.3%
Red Herring
4.1%
Bandwagon
0%
Appeal to Emotion
34.2%
Begging the Question
0%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
17.7%
Tu Quoque
0%
Burden of Proof
1.8%
Appeal to Nature
0%
Composition/Division
4.7%
Anecdotal
40.1%
No True Scotsman
0%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
4.4%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Middle Ground
2.7%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Special Pleading
0%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Unattributed Quote
2.4%
Quote-first Misdirection
0%
Biased Writer Voice
0%
Indoctrination
3.5%
Politically Left Leaning Bias
0%
Politically Right Leaning Bias
0%
Attempt to Sell a Product or Service
0%

339 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.