In The NY Times’ “The Morning”, a start-of-the-day briefing, David Leonhardt begins with:
Good morning. The attorney general spars with Democrats. Tech C.E.O.s prepare for criticism from Congress. And televised conspiracy theories are helping to spread the virus.
Leonhardt names Sinclair Broadcast Group, Fox News, and Breitbart for spreading falsehoods and CT about Covid-19, and continually downplaying the severity of the pandemic.
Why is the U.S. enduring a far more severe virus outbreak than any other rich country?
There are multiple causes, but one of them is the size and strength of right-wing media organizations that frequently broadcast falsehoods. The result is confusion among many Americans about scientific facts that are widely accepted, across the political spectrum, in other countries.
Canada, Japan and much of Europe have no equivalent to Sinclair — whose local newscasts reach about 40 percent of Americans — or Fox News. Germany and France have widely read blogs that promote conspiracy theories. “But none of them have the reach and the funding of Fox or Sinclair,” Monika Pronczuk, a Times reporter based in Europe, told me.
Fox gets particular notice because it has shaped the way Trump has responded to the pandemic, downplaying it to help his reelection chances. Leonhardt cites Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: How Fox News may be destroying Trump’s re-election hopes.
The new Post report reveals how toxic this is on the coronavirus. Trump repeatedly failed to act to tame the spread, even though that would have helped him politically, due to a pathological refusal to admit earlier error and “overly rosy assessments and data" from Fox News:
Another self-imposed hurdle for Trump has been his reliance on a positive feedback loop. Rather than sit for briefings by infectious-disease director Anthony S. Fauci and other medical experts, the president consumes much of his information about the virus from Fox News Channel and other conservative media sources, where his on-air boosters put a positive spin on developments.
Leonhardt also names another factor:
...The lack of an aggressive response to virus misinformation from Facebook and YouTube. Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter, has identified some of this misinformation, and the two companies have responded by removing the posts he cited. But Legum told me he had pointed out only a small fraction of the false information, and the companies had done relatively little to remove it proactively.
Twitter took a slightly more aggressive step yesterday, putting temporary limits on the account of Donald Trump Jr. after he shared the false Breitbart video.
Bottom Line:
Americans are getting sick and dying, our economy is collapsing, and we are putting our children at risk, and for what? Because of Right wing media promoting their agenda over the national interest, and major corporations reluctant to upset the bottom line. (And of course Trump. Always Trump and the Republican Party.)
In a sane world, we’d be having Congressional hearings about this. There would be a huge popular outcry. There would discussion of sanctions, fines, and jail time. The word “woke” was getting some currency for a while, but with regard to this the mainstream media and the political parties seem be giving it a pass — at least until this moment.
Perhaps it might be a good idea to write our Congress Critters about this, and see what Joe Biden has to say?
This is what right wing media was specifically created to do — promote right wing ideology and the right wing agenda ahead of everything else, including reality. The mainstream media has largely given it a pass because these propaganda pushers call themselves ‘news’ while yelling about freedom of the press even as they attack legitimate media. Right wing media is a pre-existing condition that has put the health of the body politic at mortal risk.
It’s taking an actual death toll to call attention to this — and that doesn’t begin to cover all the other ways they have systematically undermined the public interest in America and elsewhere in the world for one reason: making the rich and powerful behind these disinformation outlets even more rich and powerful.
Too many people have become comfortably numb to this. Disinformation kills more insidiously than a virus, and the damage goes deeper.
Wednesday, Jul 29, 2020 · 3:50:01 PM +00:00 · xaxnar
UPDATE: Louie Gohmert has tested positive for the coronavirus — a day after some face time with William Barr...
Gohmert, who was in attendance at Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General William Barr, is the seventh representative to contract the virus. He was spotted without a mask on Tuesday speaking with Barr within an arm’s length prior to the hearing. Barr will be tested today for coronavirus following Gohmert’s positive result.
Gohmert has continuously struck a defiant tone on the topic of masks. When pressed on his decision not to wear a mask in June, Gohmert insisted that because he is regularly tested he does not need to wear one. At a meeting at the White House in May, Gohmert pointed his attack at members of the media.
“We had tests and nobody in here has the coronavirus unless it’s somebody in the media,” Gohmert said at the meeting. “So the only reason we would wear masks is if we were trying to protect ourselves from you, in the media. And we’re not scared of you.”
Wednesday, Jul 29, 2020 · 6:42:17 PM +00:00 · xaxnar
UPDATE: Eric Boehlert has the details on The Deplorables, and how they are making things worse.
Trump’s deplorables are keeping America sick.
The country could effectively put the crippling Covid-19 pandemic behind us, but Trump supporters, including Republican officials, are making that impossible by waging a cultural war against common-sense pandemic solutions, such as wearing masks to curb the virus' spread. As most countries now enjoy post-coronavirus recoveries, Trump's America careens deeper into the crisis. If only somebody had warned us about how dangerous his fanatic followers are.
Hillary Clinton, of course did just that, and the press crucified her for it. In September 2016, she suggested half of Trump supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables." The baskets included, " “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic."