Just when the public needed the media to play it straight, the growing bias in the press let them down and made the coronavirus crisis “worse than it needed to be,” according to a new analysis.
Already facing a substantial trust gap, the latest Gallup/Knight Foundation survey found that people in the United States were concerned about the media exaggerating the illness or downplaying how the crisis caused substantial harm.
As with many things in the Trump political environment, partisanship played a role. Democrats saw a bigger problem with stories that downplayed the virus, while Republicans said reports that hyped the crisis were more harmful.
But in both cases, the majority of partisans in each political party agreed that the media’s coverage of the pandemic fell far short of what they wanted.
Asked if media exaggerating the coronavirus caused “unnecessary harm,” 87% of Republicans agreed. Among Democrats, it was 25 points lower, at 62%.
Asked if downplaying the crisis threatened public health, 78% of Democrats agreed. Among Republicans, it was 60%.
President John Adams signed a law making it a crime to criticize the government; 20 newspaper editors were imprisoned. Andrew Jackson not only had his own paper, edited by a member of his cabinet, but it got government subsidies. Kayleigh McEnany hurting your feelings is not a constitutional crisis.
You buy ink by the barrel, fill the airwaves 24 hours a day and get millions of clicks on your websites. Victims? Get over yourselves.
We are now a nation divided as never since the Civil War and these media lies are largely the instigator of that. This is especially bad because, coming out of a pandemic, the likelihood of our society to have the ability to work together is seriously undermined, perhaps for years to come.
We may never be the same.
Many, influenced by their moral narcissism, consciously or unconsciously, don’t want us to succeed. They are the media’s children.
