Our Horrible, Incompetent Media: Coronavirus Edition

America’s mainstream media is lousy even in the best of times.

This is not the best of times.

All the bias, incompetence, mendacity and just plain manifest stupidity of national media has been on even sharper display than usual during the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak.

Consider this roundup just a small sampler of the many ways our media has failed to provide accurate, unbiased news during the crisis:

  • First up is NBC channeling the communist Chinese government:

    The mainstream media’s routine parroting of propaganda from China’s communist government as it relates to their Wuhan coronavirus cases has been well-documented here at RedState and elsewhere. But what continues to be shocking is how many national news media outlets keep doing so without any trace of shame whatsoever.

    Case in point, NBC News, who tweeted out this gem early this morning about the number of Wuhan coronavirus deaths reported in the U.S. in a 24 hour-plus time period in comparison to China in the same timeframe:

    U.S. reports 1,264 coronavirus deaths in over 24 hours.

    Meanwhile in China, where the pandemic broke out, not a single new coronavirus death was reported. https://t.co/ooXkR9X2L5

    — NBC News (@NBCNews) April 7, 2020

    Two things came to mind to me when I read that tweet:

    First, it came across as an unnecessary cheap shot “gotcha” similar to how the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler tried to dunk on President Trump by saying his comments about the low unemployment rate during the SOTU “did not age well” in light of the millions of jobs lost in recent weeks.

    The second thing was that it sounded like something you’d read on any one of the number of Chinese government-run “media” accounts on Twitter, bragging about how they were doing so much better at combating the virus than the United States.

  • Not only does CNN lie, but they lie about having lied:

    It’s pretty clear that there is a concerted effort by outlets like CNN to bury their erroneous reporting and downplaying of the Wuhan coronavirus threat by deflecting to Fox News, but the evidence shows CNN was among the worst offenders.

    Beyond that, CNN has also been a willing participant in the Chinese government’s propaganda war against the United States, slammed Fox News for covering New York’s response failures – even though CNN’s Jake Tapper covered them the very next day, has purposely and deceptively used the “per capita” label on a selective basis when reporting on US cases in a way that paints the U.S. in an unflattering light, and ran with the absurd “man dies from swallowing fish tank cleaner” story as a way to falsely blame Trump.

  • Why is the New York Times reporting that President Trump had a financial interest in hydroxychloroquine, a patent-expired drug that several different manufacturers produce? To ask the question is to answer it.

    The only conclusion to draw from this is that the paper’s report is another example on a long list of them on how the MSM actually seems to be rooting against the use of hydroxychloroquine as a promising treatment for suffering Wuhan Coronavirus patients because Orange Man Bad, so much so that they’re willing to deceive their readers as to the nature of Trump’s supposed “financial interest” in it.

    Further, this alleged link is that a company that makes a name-brand version is a small percentage of the holdings of a mutual fund President Trump has money in:

    By this standard, I evidently have a “financial interest” in every company in the Fortune 500…

  • There was yet another “sources say” (i.e., #JustTrustMeBro) report that the Pentagon knew about the Wuhan coronavirus in November promoted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos (speaking of Democratic Party tools). It took all of twelve hours for the Pentagon to point out that Stephanopoulos was full of shit.
  • On the mendacity front, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes manages to lie on both sides of the same issue: “Chris Hayes, One Month Ago: Trump ‘Personally Pressured’ Health Officials to ‘Manipulate the Numbers Downward.’ Chris Hayes, Yesterday: Trump Inflated the Death Count So He Could Brag When The Numbers Came In Lower.”
  • On the “just plain stupid” front, a reporter asks President Trump why he doesn’t just shut down all grocery stores. Evidently the grocery fairy brings him all his food every week.
  • And stupidity isn’t just limited to the big things: Lots of media figures fell for a fake “Colin Kaepernick signed with the Jets” hoax on Twitter. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Our media even hates just the possibility of hope, as with noted CNN media tool Brian Stelter.
  • Once again, this is just a small sample of the horrible state of our current media. If I wanted to include every cornavirus screwup, I’d still be writing it…

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