The primary article that I will be quoting today is hidden behind a pay firewall at the financially troubled SacBee however I copied and pasted the title and found an archived copy on the Internet.
Activists sue Fox News for spreading coronavirus lies. Should Devin Nunes be worried?
I wish to look at a few parts of the clearly labeled opinion piece by Bee editor Gill Duran. I wish to look at it in terms of his accusations and what we know now as opposed to when he posted it a mere two weeks ago on April 10th.
Much of this is a hit piece on Congressman Devin Nunes. I guess nobody at the Bee’s Fresno outlet was equipped to take on the Congressman, Fox News, and the First Amendment so they had to import a heavy hitter from outside of the area.
The setup of the article basically this:
Yet the Republican congressman continues to downplay the coronavirus threat in his regular Fox News appearances. Now, an activist group is suing Fox for its campaign to mislead viewers about the virus.
Ok, so a Congressman (Devin Nunes) says something people in the other party don’t believe and therefore they must sue to silence him. Clearly no Constitutional issues with this logic.
Also, we learn that the Liberal group is suing Fox News “for its campaign to mislead viewers about the virus.” Please note that the word campaign implies that Fox News is purposely setting out to mislead their viewers about the severity of the Corona virus. (This also implies that the mainstream media are truth tellers and anyone espousing a different point of view is thus a liar.)
As proof for this thesis, the author invokes the Orange Man as his star witness.
A week ago, Nunes went on Fox News to blast Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to slow the virus’ spread. Nunes labeled California’s dramatic measures as “overkill.” This happened on the same day that the Trump administration said COVID-19 could kill 240,000 Americans.
Even President Donald Trump is urging Americans to stay home, but Nunes appears to think the pandemic is a joke.
OK, so the model generated by Bill Gates and company—that has never been right throughout the epidemic—proves Fox is lying. Boy, at the time that assertion was thin, and now it is ridiculous.
Oh, the logic is something like this:
Orange Man quotes the current model (which Dr. Fauci approved of). Nunes challenges said model when he appeared on Fox (as have Hannity and others). By challenging the orthodoxy of the model which Trump also quotes as authoritative, Nunes and Fox are guilty of journalistic heresy. Implied is that Fox News viewers are ill informed and mind-numbed robots (since they are conservatives). If viewers believe what they see on Fox, they will surely die. Thus, Nunes and Fox have blood on their hands and need to be held accountable. Clearly Liberals must defend the masses from Fox and conservatives. That in a nutshell is the alleged basis of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit by the Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics says “defendants acted in bad faith to willfully and maliciously disseminate false information denying and minimizing the danger posed by the spread of the novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19, which is now recognized as an international pandemic.”
Folks, I just want to look at the last phrase of this paragraph because I keep hearing it over and over from those on the Left. “…COVID-19… is now recognized as an international pandemic.” Somehow the fact that Covid-19 is a pandemic is the trump card (no pun intended) of the Left. It seems that in the Liberal lexicon “pandemic” is a big word meaning “its gonna kill all ya’ll.”
Sorry guys. Nice try but no cigar. Pandemic means that this Corona virus is in a lot of places all at once. Declaring it a pandemic is not a commentary on whether said microbe is lethal to the existence of humanity.
But the author has more to say:
For months, Fox’s hosts have downplayed the coronavirus, denying that it poses a serious threat and casting the pandemic as a Democratic ploy to undermine Trump. Guests like Nunes have mocked public health orders to slow the virus’ spread.
Now, Fox may face consequences.
While two weeks ago, the author might have believed this (I’m being very charitable) does he believe it now? Clearly, the virus was much more widespread than initially reported—as skeptics at the time said it was—and therefore Covid-19 is much less lethal than initially reported. In the early days of the panic, there were reports that about 4 to 5 percent of those infected would die and in those over age 70, up to 18 percent would not recover. Remember, “Italy was only two weeks ahead of us…?”
Again equating “threat” and “pandemic” is not the same thing. Also, “flattening the curve” is a measure not to keep anyone from getting sick but designed to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system which again never happened. As my wife likes to point-out, it’s the same number of people under the curve.
Here are two more paragraphs to ponder:
Ecarma reports that Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman said on MSNBC that Fox insiders felt “real concern…that their early downplaying of the coronavirus actually exposes Fox News to potential legal action by viewers who maybe were misled and actually have died from this.”
“The misinformation that reaches the Fox News audience is a danger to public health,” wrote a group of over 100 American journalism professors in an open letter to Murdoch and Fox. “Indeed, it is not an overstatement to say that your misreporting endangers your own viewers.”
Noticed the logic of the argument, Fox viewers didn’t panic as much as viewers of the Liberal media, therefore, Fox has killed people? How does any business other than Planned Parenthood thrive by killing their customers?
Towards the conclusion of this piece by a highly compensated editor of the McClatchy flagship newspaper, we read:
Can COVID-19 victims successfully sue Fox “News” for its consistent stream of misinformation about the coronavirus?
Again, I don’t subscribe to cable but I do read the Fox News website which features many points of view, something not usually found anywhere else in mass media, and I would not describe Fox’s Covid-19 coverage as a “campaign” or monolithic or predetermined. I think they generally do a better job of separating fact from emotion. On this topic, I think they are very inconsistent in their point of view. I find their radio news coverage to be different than their website or even their high dollar opinion/entertainment programs.
As Johnnie Does said here yesterday, affirmation or information?
Pandemic Panic
Folks, I’ve been having trouble for the last two months with the Liberal fixation on the idea of Corona being a pandemic. Clearly H1N1 was much worse than Corona and we didn’t shutdown anything. Is it the typical Liberal hypocrisy that Sean Hannity loves to rail about or the old saying, “ignorance is bliss?” Or something else?
I think the underlying issue is something more primal. I think the Liberal folks are panicking more because they fear death and the thought of dying, especially in a seemingly random and unknowable way. People are treating Corona as if it were a biblical plague.
Liberals think this life is all that there is. No Heaven or Hell, just this. I think Corona has hit a nerve in these folk’s souls. Think Pascal’s God shaped vacuum.
On the other hand, I’m not worried about it and neither is my wife. The wife asserts that she already had it in January or very early February and based on her occupation and symptoms, she probably did. Whether it’s been thru our family or not, I’m not worried. Folks, stuff like this is God’s department not mine. If I get it, I get it. If I don’t, then that’s life. I just need to trust in God and not be bothered about Corona. Jesus told us not to fear what kills the body but he who kills the body and casts your soul into hell. That’s the one you need to fear.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
Yes, I am conscience to keep more space between me and elderly people, but I will shake hands with anybody that is willing. I don’t fear others or hoard food and supplies. When shopping, I take what I need, just like I always do. My staff here at the blog and I are in agreement that this whole thing is a function of people watching the 24/7 news cycle and our current situation is not based in reality. Most changes to my life, as a result of Covid-19, have been forced on me by others reacting out of their fears and are not by my own choosing.
Covid-19 is a tiny blip on the pandemic scale. Lots of people have had it and most of them never even missed a day’s work. OK, they didn’t miss work until their governor took their job away. Why this guy from the Bee thinks its Armageddon is a mystery.
Final Thoughts
Oh, per today’s news, 20 percent of New York City residents have had the Corona virus.
One of every five New York City residents tested positive for antibodies to the coronavirus, according to preliminary test results described by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday, suggesting the virus had spread far more widely than known.
The results also provided the tantalizing prospect that many New Yorkers who never knew they had been infected — possibly as many as 2.7 million, the governor said — had already encountered the virus and survived. Cuomo also suggested the death rate was far lower than believed.
1 in 5 New Yorkers may have had COVID-19, antibody tests described by Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggest
So, two weeks after the rant in the Bee, Fox News and Congressman Nunes have been vindicated in their skepticism for like the millionth time in the last week. Oh, and the vindication is also coming from CNN and California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Gov. Gavin Newsom during Wednesday’s daily news briefing said he has called upon coroners and medical examiners to “go back as far as December” and perform autopsies on others who may have died from COVID-19 complications before the spreading coronavirus was detected in the state, “to ultimately guide a deeper understanding of when this pandemic really started to impact California directly.”
Coronavirus killed in California earlier than known. Newsom wants to re-examine more deaths
California looking for Covid-19 deaths back to December, now that’s news, at least to liberals.
The facts are that statistically speaking, Covid-19 is very contagious but rarely fatal.