‘I Just Became Obsessed With It’

NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny spends her days exploring those corners of the internet where conspiracy theories are born—and start spreading. She calls it “deep hanging out,” a term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz to describe the research process of immersing yourself in a cultural, group or social experience. For Zadrozny, that culture is misinformation. “That’s basically what I do. I spend a lot of time in conspiratorial spaces,” Zadrozny told me. “So those are far right spaces, anti-vaccination spaces, conspiracy theory spaces on the internet, and I just sort of wait for something to happen.”

Something big happened in December 2020 as the first COVID vaccines were rolling out. “I was watching these live streams of medical professionals getting the vaccine for the first time,” she said. “Everybody was sort of watching it, the whole world was. But in conspiracy theory spaces, people were watching, waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to go wrong, waiting for some kind of evidence to prove their theories that the vaccine was unsafe.”

So when a nurse in Tennessee named Tiffany Dover fainted after receiving her vaccination in front of local news cameras, Zadozny witnessed the birth of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories of the pandemic: that the vaccine had killed Tiffany Dover. “And so for me it was like…if I can debunk this one rumor, this one conspiracy theory, it sort of has an impact on all of the other conspiracy theories that are happening right now. So I just became obsessed with it.”

Zadrozny set out to prove that Tiffany Dover was not dead, and to explore the conspiracy theorists who insisted that she was. The result was the hit NBC News podcast “Tiffany Dover Is Dead*,” which has had 1.4 million downloads to date and was selected just last week as a finalist for a Deadline Club award. But one thing eluded her: talking to Tiffany Dover herself.

When she finally met face to face with Dover, who had agreed to an interview, Zadrozny said “honestly, I cried.” For Zadrozny, telling Tiffany’s story without her felt like failure. “I did feel like I made it worse,” she told me. “I never really found her. So the conspiracy theorists were like, ‘See? You never saw her with your own eyes. She is dead.’ And it sort of cemented it in their minds. And then even for normal listeners were like, ‘Wait, you’re an NBC News reporter and you couldn’t find a nurse in Chattanooga, Tennessee?’”

“I just really desperately wanted to meet her as a person,” Zadrozny said. “You know, there’s not many people who’ve been through this level of level of targeting, of this new genre of conspiracy theories that target regular people. So I really wanted to know what that was like, and how she was holding up.”

The first thing Dover said to Zadrozny was that she was grateful for the podcast—even though she still wasn’t entirely sure about sitting for an interview. “I was in a dark place and I did not have it in me to do this,” she said, “because I didn’t know if I could trust you.” She went on to say “I don’t know why I trust you now, but I’m choosing to.”

For Zadrozny, connecting with Dover—after getting to feel as if she knew her from her reporting—was powerful. “All the things that drew me and drew the whole world to her—you know, she’s a mom, she’s very sweet, she’s a nurse that helps people—all those things were true,” Zadrozny told me. “And so it was just it was really it was one of the best reporting experiences, ultimately, of my life.”