Press freedom is important. Uncovering government scandals, holding elected officials accountable and showing our deeply flawed bureaucracy’s true colors is important to keep our nation stable. Of course, there are things the public will never know, I understand that, but I also understand the key tenant behind a free press; separating this power from the government acts as a 4th “check” on absolute power - something our country was founded to prevent.
So when a crisis happens - you can count on the press. Right? At least, that’s how it should be and was intended to be. However, partisan punditry has ruined any sense of clean, honest reporting. This has been true for many decades, but ramped up off the charts since 2015 as content went digital and headlines mattered more than the actual story. Matt Taibbi’s Hate, INC. breaks it down very well. I suggest you read it - regardless of your affiliation, you’re going to get something out of it.
It’s no surprise to me that our establishment media jumped on the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s rewind to last March. Trump was coming off his first of two impeachment scandals (impeached, but not removed both times), his re-election chances were looking promising, and there was a scary, mysterious virus that forced the CCP to lock their citizens in their own homes. Now - hear me out, if that virus spreads to the States, how do you think a hyper-partisan media would react? Would they have a nuanced round-table with experts across varying fields debate on how to respond to the virus while keeping societal stability? Or, would they amplify the loudest, most nerve-wracking, extreme voices like Eric-Feigl Ding, Neil Ferguson, or Michael Osterholm about how we’re surely all going to die if we don’t lockdown until 2039? Would they have Dr. Fauci on 300+ times in one year to suggest that we’ll be back to normal next month, sometime maybe in the near future, or never? Would they have a death/case count ticker like an ESPN Monday Night Football graphic?
You tell me. We all saw it - it was literally the only thing to watch. Look - I can go in more about Dingleberry’s Twitter grift, Ferguson’s shady funding or his inability to correctly asses a serious illness, Osterholm’s “eye of the hurricane” bullshit, or flip flop Fauci, but you’ve already heard it. At this point, the NPCs are gonna NPC. There is no use. All of that is the symptom, not the problem.
Here’s the problem: https://studyhall.xyz/the-reporters-are-not-okay-extremely-not-okay/
I read that article a few days after it dropped and this past year started to make sense. There are two sides to this: the Rachel Maddows and Joy Ann Reids of the world, who have bought into their own propaganda so heavily that Maddow has to re-train herself to seeing “unmasked people” as normal and Reid proudly bragged to Fauci that she’s still #MaskingUp despite being vaccinated. Pundits like these two and the rest of MSNPC are no better than a YouTuber doing some outrageous shit in a video to push more merch or ad revenue. Actually - I’d argue Maddow and Reid are worse. People listen to them for information. They’re so far gone that they’ve led their audience past the rubicon and are ultimately contributing to the partisan divide among the nation. It’s sickening that people are seeking out that kind of bullshit for news, and are unable to use their better judgement. But I guess that’s what you have in a nation of followers.
Reid’s full comment:
I am one of the fully vaccinated," she said. "I'm fully Fauci'd. The question I have is are we really going to get to the end of it? Because, Dr. Fauci, at this point it's political. There are people who are paranoid about you. They've decided they don't trust you, they think you're trying to have the government take over their lives or put nanobots in them and Bill Gates is going to physically control them if they get the vaccine. It isn't just hesitancy, it's paranoia. You have Tucker Carlson basically saying that you're not telling the truth, if you're vaccinated there's no reason to wear a mask anymore. You have people screaming at store clerks because they don't want to wear masks. This is not rational at this point, Dr. Fauci. So I wonder, what do we do about the irrational resistance to doing the basics, getting vaccinated and wearing masks."
Do you honestly think this made things better?
As bad as Maddow and Reid are, the NYT/Daily Beast/WaPo crowd was honestly worse throughout the pandemic. There is only one accepted narrative: lockdowns, masks, schools/business closures not only worked, but we should do more of it - it’s common sense. Here’s a quote from that article:
“We’re being traumatized by the pandemic and then retraumatized by reporting on it and talking to healthcare workers,”…“At some point, I just turned into a sponge, taking on all this sadness and anger that I was surrounded by,”…
So, let’s get this straight here. You’re working a job from your desk in the comfort of your own home, probably Doordashing every meal because you’re afraid to leave your house in anything less than a hazmat suit, collecting a check and (while interviewing healthcare workers is important, there’s more than one story to be told here), interviewing the same people over and over and over again - and you’re the one who’s stressed? You’re not directly in the hospital experiencing the stress of managing the pandemic, your kid did not kill themselves because of the prolonged isolation, your home is not unsafe, etc. What a bullshit excuse. You’re doing your job!
Maybe, if these all-important journalists interview more than one angle, they’d have a better perspective on how costly all of these failed mitigation strategies actually were. Maybe, instead of writing 100 articles on why Trump’s personally responsible for every death, they could’ve reported earlier on the Cuomo Nursing Home scandal. Maybe, instead of pushing panic about how “we’re never going back to normal” or cherry picking a select few of epidemiologists who function more as absolutists than professionals, they’d understand why in a time of crisis, it’s best to keep calm rather than panic and disrupt everybody’s lives. They could have question government experts like Fauci instead of throwing him softballs every time he got in front of a camera. They could have amplified stories of families living at or below the poverty line who couldn’t afford to do zoom school instead of pretending that zoom is hip, cool, and fun! and not a massive fucking pain in the ass failure that should have never even been attempted. Just a fucking thought.
Here’s another quote I loved:
Journalism is already “a very fertile breeding ground for moral injury,” but that’s especially the case “when it can mean the difference between large numbers of people living or dying,” said Shapiro.
These are the kinds of people we’re dealing with. The fucking irony man. To all journalists who might’ve found my writing and made it this far: the lack of trust in your reporting is your own fault. I know it can be hard to hear, but your reporting made things worse. Your entire profession didn’t accurately portray the main risk factors - age and weight; instead acting like the virus is an equal opportunity killer. It’s not. It gave way to more government lies and manipulation, and citizens, especially liberals who read your work, could not accurately determine their risk level.
Congrats. Your hysteria-based reporting misinformed your intended audience. You served as a mouthpiece for the State - whatever the Approved Experts said, regardless of how outlandish, wasn’t questioned. You acted like Ron DeSantis was the anti Christ but Andrew Cuomo was the hero the country deserved. In doing this, you further damaged your entire industry, shot your credibility even more than it already is, and misreported the truth.
You no longer act as a free press. You function as self-righteous activists using the reputation of your publications to push the Approved Narrative to your followers who want to be told how and what to think. It’s confirmation bias. You’re not challenging a narrative, offering multiple perspectives on a complex issue, or sAviNg DeMoCracY - actually quite the opposite. You’re undermining the entire purpose for having a free and independent press.
I recommend that anybody who reads this article also reads the link above to the “Covid Reporters are Not OK article” - you will get a clear picture as to how unhinged and borderline mentally disturbed some of these reporters are. Essentially every reporter who was interviewed could not step back and compartmentalize the issue at hand. Here’s Apoorva Mandavilli, for example:
For Apoorva Mandavilli, the renowned New York Times reporter on science and global health, it was writing about school closures with two children at home, and writing about COVID in India, where her parents live.
In response to her reporting on the subject of child-to-child transmission, readers “told me that I’m responsible for robbing an entire generation of kids their education and responsible for ruining their mental health and that I want kids to commit suicide,” she said.
“I really hit a wall in January,“ said Mandavilli. “When the vaccines were authorized, I had this idea things were going to ease up.…I thought we were getting ready to see the end.” When the first variant news broke, igniting fears that a more contagious version of the virus might soon send the country back into chaos, she says, “it all felt very frantic again.”
She is the New York Times Science Reporter on Covid. While I do not support directly attacking her and blaming second order effects on school closures solely on her, I understand why somebody would be frustrated that her articles mainly served as a mouthpiece which were no doubt used to influence school closures. Also, if the science reporter doesn’t understand the science about how vaccines work, you have a pretty big problem on your hand. Any of the Variants of the Day - from B117 to P1, did not cause an influx of cases. If she focus on how the vaccines work, essentially disarming the spike protein, she’d understand that’s the key to protect the body against the virus. Instead of fact based reporting (keep in mind, we were told “vaccine hesitancy” was a main issue - I wonder why!), she focused on the fear - the “what if.” Let me remind you that she is the New York Times Science Reporter on Covid.
This doesn’t bode well for future crises. If you have reporters are so emotionally disturbed that they are not able to fulfill their job responsibilities, how do you expect to accurately report the issue? How do you expect to build trust? Do you want to do your job or do you want to be an activist? Why only report on one angle? Newsrooms need to honestly answer all of these questions, or an upset populace will continue to press the issue.
You've definitely inspired me to go out and buy that Hate Inc. book, so I can see the rest of how mass media has divided the country. I saw this back when BLM first took off, as I felt like the media reporting on Ferguson was largely one-sided in such a way as to convict Darren Wilson in the court of public opinion, because the reality of "Police officer kills criminal who attacked him" wouldn't make catchy headlines.
It really amazes me that the same press that spent the last year making Covid seem like instant death is snow pushing out articles about how people are scared to go back to normal. But, unfortunately, the same people that lapped up the fear porn are probably the same people still reading the news- they want to hear about people (like themselves) who don’t want to go back to normal. The number of people reading/watching the legacy media has likely dropped- most people don’t want 100% fear all the time- but that means the media needs to appeal to their loyal following, so different viewpoints apparently aren’t welcome.