The media's new narrative is to push back against relaxing lockdown measures
One of the most important elements to the COVID-19 story is to approach it with humility - most of us, even "experts," don't know very much for sure about coronavirus. I don't, you likely don't. But the media's instinct is never to embrace humility, or nuance - it's to speak definitively. This is particularly true when the facts that develop over time don't fit the predetermined narrative. Which is where things stand with several recent stories.
One development tonight is that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has announced a plan to re-open the state, beginning Friday. As Erick Erickson notes, the plan comes after consultation from the doctors who have been advising the GOP governor this entire time. Kemp isn't suddenly throwing the doors open and ripping the lockdown bandaid off. It's strategic. The IHME model now shows Georgia is 13 days past its projected peak in coronavirus deaths. 5 days since the peak for hospital resources. And notably, this comes after the IHME model has been massively revised from less than two weeks ago, when it projected three times the number of deaths for Georgia.
The response from the media? "Front-Runner for Country's Dumbest Governor to Reopen Essential Bowling Alleys, Nail Salons Friday," writes Vanity Fair. Never mind that this same strategic easing of lockdown restrictions, while still maintaining social distancing guidelines, is being implemented by Colorado's governor in nearly the same exact timeframe - the Democratic governor announced he would let the stay home order expire Monday. One of the media's favorite governors, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, has also indicated she'll do the same on May 1. The media narrative will have to shift as more blue states join the red ones in returning to some normalcy.
But that's just one of the storylines. There are also the protests. Protests that CNN says are "erupting" around the country - this was their homepage this morning: | | CNN's article used Maryland's protest as a jumping off point - the lead of their story. Meanwhile Maryland had barely any protesters at all show up. In Ohio, broadcasts showed what looked like a large scene gathered, when in reality - it was a couple dozen people. Are some people protesting? Absolutely. But the outsized media coverage of the protests by left-leaning outlets, aimed at highlighting the Trump supporters defying social distancing guidelines and stay at home orders, are further examples of geographic bias by a media based in NYC and DC. The New York Post wrote about the surge in cases in Kentucky after their protest. The next day? Just 90 new cases today. A small sample size aimed at furthering the narrative.
This goes for the "beach-shaming" happening too, where a Jacksonville beach can look quite crowded from one angle, and completely barren from another. It's all about perspective in the camera angles - and the preconceived perspective in the media. | | So what should the media be focusing on? How about what's happening in Los Angeles County. A new antibody study found that somewhere between 28-55% more residents actually had coronavirus, and recovered from it. That's an additional 221,000 to 442,000 people - or a total of 4.1% of the entire county. To put that number in perspective, no country in the world other than the United States has more than 200,000 reported cases right now total.
This is stunning, and should be major breaking news in the media. The implications are enormous, and it requires us to recalibrate practically everything we've been told about this virus. The virus must be far less deadly, but also far more contagious, than believed. How does this knowledge inform what we as a country do next?
Instead, much of the coverage has continued to be about what Trump tweeted, or what he didn't do two months ago, or what the red state governors and their Trump-supporting residents are doing (or not doing). Let's focus on the real story. | | New York Times blaming Hannity for coronavirus death sets absurd precedent
The New York Times published a sad but ultimately misguided story on the death of a "conservative" Brooklyn bar owner, who died of coronavirus after he took a cruise. The bar owner took a cruise on March 1, because, his daughter said, "He watched Fox, and believed it was under control."
The author, Ginia Bellafante, then quotes from Sean Hannity's show, however from a week after the bar owner had left for his cruise, and attempts to connect the pieces. The article had the intended effect. Journalist Jonathan Chait tweeted that the story was "a portrait of a man killed by Fox News."
There are several patently ridiculous elements to this insinuation. First, around March 1, no one in the media - on the right or the left - was suggesting the bar owner had any reason to doubt he was at risk. Two days later the entire media was covering Super Tuesday, where 5 million Democratic voters headed to the polls to cast their votes. No one - not on TV or in the print media - was including anything about coronavirus in their coverage. Imagine how many voters contracted coronavirus that day.
Of course, you also have people like Anderson Cooper suggesting 3 days after the bar owner went on his cruise that people "should be more concerned about the flu" than coronavirus. Interestingly, the author herself had previously tweeted that she didn't "understand the panic."
But this is not to cast blame - no member of the media is responsible for the death of any Americans here. And it's bad precedent for the New York Times to try to insinuate it's Fox News' fault. This is like how some people tried to blame Bernie Sanders for James Hodgkinson shooting Steve Scalise. Yes, Hodgkinson supported Sanders - but that doesn't implicate Sanders for the actions of Hodgkinson.
No one took the coronavirus crisis seriously enough early on - including Donald Trump and Fox News. But neither did Joe Biden (who was still telling his supporters to go vote on March 15) or the left media. The media is not to blame for what came next. | | Dr. Fauci's appearance on The Breakfast Club proves Charlamagne's interviewing dominance I've long believed that Charlamagne tha God is one of the best interviewers in the media today. Co-host of "The Breakfast Club" on Power 105.1 in New York, Charlamagne has a wide audience and gets the opportunity to spar with the most influential people in culture and politics. His interview with Elizabeth Warren was probably her toughest of the presidential cycle. Last week Dr. Fauci made an appearance on "The Breakfast Club," and the 25-minute interview was informative and unique. Charlamagne pressed Fauci on some specific points - leading to a far more contentious, but still substantive, interview than Fauci is used to from the rest of the media. All while Trump himself was not the centerpiece. If I ran a cable news network, I'd look to hire Charlamagne for an interview show. And, as I have described in the past when he made an appearance on Steph Curry's Instagram, Dr. Fauci continues making smart ad interesting media choices. | | | QUICK HITS
- Erik Wemple continues his excellent work holding the media accountable for their poor coverage of the now-discredited Steele Dossier, in light of the most recent news.
- Sports-starved viewers got something to enjoy last night, with the first two hours of ESPN's Jordan doc "The Last Dance." The ratings were massive.
- The Los Angeles Times' Steve Battaglio has a great piece on former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, who is running against AOC in the Democratic primary. | | WATCH IT... One of the more interesting voices I had seen on CNN recently was Dr. David Katz, who appeared on AC360 March 23, who talked about how a blanket quarantine doesn't make sense. Haven't seen him much recently, but he was back on Mark Levin's Fox News show over the weekend, and made some excellent points on herd immunity.
HEAR IT... Ezra Klein has an excellent interview with Scott Gottlieb, who was Trump's first FDA commissioner, and has proven to be a dispassionate, expert voice during coronavirus. The topic - how we come out of of lockdown.
READ IT... Entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreesen has a fascinating post-coronavirus manifesto of sorts that's a must-read - on building: "Building isn't easy, or we'd already be doing all this. We need to demand more of our political leaders, of our CEOs, our entrepreneurs, our investors. We need to demand more of our culture, of our society. And we need to demand more from one another." | |
ANECDOTAL MEDIA WAKE-UP CALL
Just, you know...anecdotal. I tweeted this morning about CNN's frontpage story on how "protests are erupting" in the country and had focused on Maryland as the hook - yet Maryland announced it had more press requests to cover the protests than protesters. That tweet has 1,800+ RTs right now - from across the political spectrum, from German Lopez at Vox, Neera Tanden and Markos Moulitsas on the left, to Kevin Madden and Frank Luntz on the right (and interestingly...Andy Roddick). I don't think the media fully gets the bipartisan outrage this type of coverage brings. Or...it's just a single anecdote that says nothing... | | | GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM | | | Get ready - wearing a mask, particularly while on TV, is going to become the new woke symbol. I get why a reporter at a protest may be doing it, but what reason is Katy Tur doing it while she's around zero people, other than for the performative aspects? | | Thanks for reading. Stay safe, talk to you later this week...
- Steve Krakauer
@SteveKrak | | | |
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