US Media Offering a Different Picture of Covid-19 From Science Journals or International Media, Study Finds (nytimes.com) 175
David Leonhardt, writing at The New York Times: Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, noticed something last year about the Covid-19 television coverage that he was watching on CNN and PBS. It almost always seemed negative, regardless of what was he seeing in the data or hearing from scientists he knew. When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. And when vaccine research began showing positive results, the coverage downplayed it, as far as Sacerdote could tell. But he was not sure whether his perception was correct.
To check, he began working with two other researchers, building a database of Covid coverage from every major network, CNN, Fox News, Politico, The New York Times and hundreds of other sources, in the U.S. and overseas. The researchers then analyzed it with a social-science technique that classifies language as positive, neutral or negative. The results showed that Sacerdote's instinct had been right -- and not just because the pandemic has been mostly a grim story. The coverage by U.S. publications with a national audience has been much more negative than coverage by any other source that the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications and regional U.S. media. "The most well-read U.S. media are outliers in terms of their negativity," Molly Cook, a co-author of the study, told me. About 87 percent of Covid coverage in national U.S. media last year was negative. The share was 51 percent in international media, 53 percent in U.S. regional media and 64 percent in scientific journals. Notably, the coverage was negative in both U.S. media outlets with liberal audiences (like MSNBC) and those with conservative audiences (like Fox News).
To check, he began working with two other researchers, building a database of Covid coverage from every major network, CNN, Fox News, Politico, The New York Times and hundreds of other sources, in the U.S. and overseas. The researchers then analyzed it with a social-science technique that classifies language as positive, neutral or negative. The results showed that Sacerdote's instinct had been right -- and not just because the pandemic has been mostly a grim story. The coverage by U.S. publications with a national audience has been much more negative than coverage by any other source that the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications and regional U.S. media. "The most well-read U.S. media are outliers in terms of their negativity," Molly Cook, a co-author of the study, told me. About 87 percent of Covid coverage in national U.S. media last year was negative. The share was 51 percent in international media, 53 percent in U.S. regional media and 64 percent in scientific journals. Notably, the coverage was negative in both U.S. media outlets with liberal audiences (like MSNBC) and those with conservative audiences (like Fox News).
H. L. Mencken (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken
Corollary: If it bleeds, it leads.
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken
Corollary: If it bleeds, it leads.
This is not imaginary: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not imaginary: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
The article was pointing out that news was negative when the case count was going up, and the news was still negative when the case count was going down.
It does seem to be true-- people want to hear about what is going wrong, and what to worry about; they don't want to hear about what is going right, and what to not worry about.
Re: (Score:3)
It does seem to be true-- people want to hear about what is going wrong, and what to worry about; they don't want to hear about what is going right, and what to not worry about.
To be fair we've had several incidents of oodles of people going crazy acting like the pandemic's suddenly over. Maybe they're using sensationalism to drive sales, maybe they're cautious in their reporting so we don't get another flareup. Either way you slice it this pandemic has killed lots of people and the human beings operating within the media have themselves and their loved ones to protect.
Re: (Score:2)
But, the (news) media's job is to report the news....NOT shape the news and behavior.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying that people/entities should be held accountable for what they say, right?
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently the news medias job is to increase profits, in general. Shaping the news has always been a goal as well. Used to be that most towns had 2 newspapers, each pushing a different political shape and behaviours. For a short while, the government demanded news reporting as part of a TV (and radio?) license, things were good then. Then deregulation led to news being about making money with some exceptions where the goal was shaping.
Basically, historically, if you wanted to push a shape to news, you bought a newspaper and pushed your shape. There used to be very powerful powerful media barons. People like Hearst who pushed the whole war on marijuana to protect his pulp paper industry to people like Murdock who's principal aim seems to push certain politics.
Re: (Score:2)
But, the (news) media's job is to report the news....NOT shape the news and behavior.
Have you hired any reporters lately? In that case, you can tell them what their job is. Otherwise, I think it is up to the "news" organizations to decide what their job is. I do put that in quotes because obviously much of what they report isn't what I would call news... so I agree with you a bit in that what news organizations do isn't what I wish they would do. (In my opinion, the internet has basically destroyed news organizations, but that's a whole other topic.)
Re: (Score:2)
If their job isn't to report the news as objectively as possible they should be slapped with false advertising if they claim to be "news".
If they want to have a significant slant or report on opinion they should call it "current events" or "controversies".
Re: (Score:3)
But, the (news) media's job is to report the news
In the US? Don't make me laugh.
In the US the media, like any collection of corporations, has only one responsibility and that is to make money for the owners.
That is the system the US citizens vote for. Don't ever forget that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does case count mean anything?
Case count has been a good leading indicator for death rate.
To a certain extent, even mortality is a useless number.
Depending on your definition of "useless". I think how many people are dying? is not a useless question, but your mileage apparently varies.
It's all about healthcare utilization.
Among other things,
The whole goal was supposed to be to keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed
One goal. Not the whole goal. The whole goal was to minimize the number of people who die.
( and thus leading to preventable deaths due to lack of equipment or personnel to treat them ).
Yes, that was the "flattening the curve" thing: don't overwhelm the healthcare system. And, it worked. There were some places where the healthcare systems were overwhelmes, but for the most part, it succeeded. That is an example of one of the places where good news wasn't reported, as the article mentions.
That goal, of course, morphed into the colossal mess we have today, where we have to beg to have our rights back ( good job you panicky sheep ).
In general I've noticed that people who make posts accusing other people of being "sheep" are conspiracy theory nuts who selectively read data to bolster their conspiracy thinking. Possibly you are the exception that tests the rule, but I'll ignore this statement anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
I've noticed that when it comes to corona, most of the people callings others "sheep" are sheep who follow a different shepherd (possibly to the slaughter).
Re: (Score:3)
Your arguments says that if the case count is not identical to death rate, it has no meaning at all.
Do you see the fallacy in that argument, or do you need to have it explicitly pointed out?
Re: (Score:2)
No, I said that case count is meaningless...then I showed why.
You, however, are attempting to reframe my argument into something I didn't say. So please, tell me more about argumentative fallacies.
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:4, Insightful)
Your arguments says that if the case count is not identical to death rate, it has no meaning at all.
Do you see the fallacy in that argument, or do you need to have it explicitly pointed out?
No, I said that case count is meaningless...then I showed why.
Correct. And the "why" you showed was "here are some reasons why case count does not perfectly replicate death count. Therefore, since it isn't perfect, it is meaningless."
You, however, are attempting to reframe my argument into something I didn't say. So please, tell me more about argumentative fallacies.
That was your argument; and that was the totality of your argument. I could explain why it is fallacy, but I don't see the point.
Re: (Score:2)
You're being an idiot, after you got smacked down.
You're just adding superlatives, but they don't turn your "should" into anything other than your subjective conclusion; one that is dismissive of something for not being perfect.
If you want to know why case counts are relavent, look it the fuck up because this is 101-level shit.
Re: (Score:3)
How about you explain why case count is relevant and how we should act based on that.
Even though case count has error bars (no one disagrees with that), it is still an accurate number. Don't assume that because there are some measuring issues, the number isn't accurate.
Re: (Score:2)
Explain how case count is relevant? Have you even bothered to look at graphs?
https://covidtracking.com/data [covidtracking.com]
Expand the graphs to "Historical" instead of "Last 90 days". Compare new cases vs hospitalizations and deaths. Every time cases went up, both hospitalizations and deaths went up. Yes, as time went on, it took a bigger increase in cases to have the same effect on the other 2 graphs. That's a sign that we're making progress in learning how to treat it. But even with our current knowledge, you can see a d
Re: (Score:2)
Here is a relevance for you.
If the number of cases are on the rise then we haven't got the virus under control. If the case counts are decreasing it could be a sign that we are getting a handle on things and if people don't get lazy maybe we can soon return to "normal". If the case count continues to lower over an extended period more of the restrictions from high case counts can start to be lifted. If the case count is increasing substantially in a short period of time people have obviously gotten to lax a
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Captain Obvious (Score:2)
meet Dr Obvious. He has a PhD in oviousness
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice that the reports did not correspond well to reality.
Polarization theory [Re:H. L. Mencken] (Score:5, Insightful)
I would instead say that the strategy of politicians is to over-tell constituents what they want to hear and skip what they don't want to hear. Thus, they polarize info rather than exaggerate it all . Nothing is at level 4 or 6, it's always 11 or 0 (ignored). For "news" it's a similar strategy, except the goal is to keep eyeballs around to see ads instead of get votes, but the result and strategy is similar.
Dale Carnegie's famous book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" tells you how to gain the attention and trust of others. Logic and accuracy* unfortunately don't cut it. Instead, it's methodological kissing up, and it's what news and politicians do by pressing the right buttons in your head.
It's not presented as a negative thing, but a positive thing because the other person "returns the love" if you follow the procedures. But in the end, facts and logic are given the shaft if you read in between the lines. Humans are social creatures with bloated egos; the book is just the messenger. Most people probably already know this, but to us geeks it's hard to swallow because details, facts, and logic is our forte. It's sometimes said that "real life is more like high-school rather than college".
* The book doesn't say outright lie, but implies facts should be sugar-coated.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless the person has Asperger's, then he's pissed-off that he's being told to 'conform' to your priorities and to have the 'correct' feelings. ("Think of the children" wing-nuts and Disney movies do this a lot.)
I think geeks prefer to measure the rules (and their agreement with the details and facts) to measuring their egos and its agreement with the kissing-up.
I certainly tire of people who allow someone 'more' rights because that person has beauty and/or charm. Younger people are noticable because they
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:5, Informative)
Mencken had a wicked sense of humor. Other notable quips:
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
And the granddaddy of them all:
"There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong."
Re:H. L. Mencken (Score:5, Insightful)
Corollary: If it bleeds, it leads.
I'd actually generalize this a bit more.
It's about the drama. The public doesn't want dry boring ol' facts. They want a story with drama. Drama generally means conflict. So they have to show conflict. And they'll find this conflict to report, even if it means interviewing the loonies.
And let's face it, "We're all gonna die!" is far more dramatic than "Everything's going to be okay." So the reporting tends more towards that area. Another angle is there's generally little harm in reporting bad news versus good news. If I say, "We're all gonna die!" and we don't, everybody is pretty happy about not being dead and has forgotten my prophecies of doom and gloom. If I say "Everything's going to be okay" and it isn't, I'm in trouble. If you prepare for the worst, everything else is a pleasant surprise.
Re: (Score:3)
I indeed have hobgoblins, they live under the bed and whisper at me during the night, saying to ignore my medicine.
Careful professor (Score:4, Insightful)
You wonder if an eloi like Bruce Sacerdote even knows how close to danger he actually is. Take this just at little farther and he'll be branded 'anti-science' and banished from polite company.
Negativity Sells (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is going to watch cable news for hours on end (or doom scroll news feeds) to hear "stuff is bad, but we're muddling through it, we're being asked to keep our masks on, stay home to the extent we can and keep our distance from others when we can't.". It's much more lucrative to have have talking heads blathering either about the end of life as we know it, or how it's all a hoax. People are increasingly using mass media for confirmation bias, and rejecting any information that doesn't square with what the chatter is in social media. The News industry is increasingly not "news" anymore, much less about reporting than it is opinion aggregation. Cable news, consolidation of local TV station ownership, syndicated programming, etc. Take your pick, these are all trends that are about maximizing shareholder value as opposed to any civic duty to accurately inform the public.
Cat videos Sell (Score:2)
Positive attracts as well. Just look at all the cat videos.
Re: (Score:2)
I was just about to say it's starting to feel like all news should be replaced with puppy videos.
Re: (Score:2)
This has been my view as well. Nobody watches the news when "nothing going on, all is good", so you have to stir up the drama. But the reality is that while cases were sometimes falling in various areas, at least in the US, it was far worse here than most of the developed world and the last thing we wanted to encourage is governments to open up or remove mask mandates (assuming they had one). The cases were simply not falling anywhere near enough to justify change.
So I guess the question is: yes, news is ne
Re:Negativity Sells (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. I'm betting this result holds for topics other than Covid-19.
Watching US news channels is really jarring if you're not from there. The scariest thing about it is that it doesn't seem to be a cultural anomaly, but (as you describe) a logical result of the commercialization of news. I see the news in my country increasingly going to shit as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's a result of news no longer doing investigations, and thus not having anything real to talk about. This could be a result of commercialization.
Fulfilling its purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
A long history (Score:4, Insightful)
They have a long history of being able to make anything look bad. It's part of the job.
As Scott Aaronson says, "The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present. I repeatedly muttered to myself, as I read: "dude, you could make anything sound shady with this exact same rhetorical toolkit!""
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310 [scottaaronson.com]
No shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can agree there. We used to just have local news for a half hour, world news for a half hour, then a recap at 11. A 24 hour news cycle would have been considered laughably silly. News just didn't happen that fast and didn't propagate fast enough. So while war was raging in Vietnam and lots of stuff was happening there was still no way to get enough information fast enough to actually have all that much news. Further, there was no *need* for everyone to know everything. Some people yes, they had a need, the general public though not so much.
Now with fast updates, we still don't really have more than a half hour of useful local news and a half hour of useful world news. The good thing in modern times should have been that those wishing to know more could just check the internet for details and in depth analysis; but what we got instead was endless repetition.
Now to be fair. The original idea of CNN Headline News was just great - not a lot of news, but you can get caught up quickly and then change the channel. Nothing but the top stories in short format. Great for people travelling on the road so be able to see what's going on any time of day no matter when you finally get into your hotel room. You could get more info of course with normal CNN, but ho-hum, not terribly vital to have it 24/7. Then it all broke. The "headline" part started getting shows that weren't news, they were angry loud voices from failed past prosecutors, there started to be a whole hour just on Hollywood news, crap like that. And other channels got into the mix, and suddenly everyone had a 24/7 news cycles. So we went from one channel that was useful with perhaps slightly too much news, to everyone overflowing with crap and filler and repetition and obssession over particular stories that were going nowhere that no one needed updates on (crashed airliner was still crashed and we don't know why, the toddler was still dead and police still don't know who did it, a 54th congress member had a quip that week that upset someone).
No shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in Jan '20, they were pushing "covid is no big deal" because it wasn't here yet, there was a victim narrative about those poor oppressed Asian Americans, and because Trump banned travel from Mainland China.
Around February when it began to look like it was going to be a big deal, they were pushing panic because there was a "Trump is asleep at the wheel" angle to it.
And on it went all summer. Moderna and Biontech were manufacturing small batch doses to test a vaccine as early as February and March, but it was new tech and Trump's Operation Warp Speed leaning into it was just more fodder for the "omg he's selling snake oil" angle that started with HCQ and zinc (btw still no prospective randomized control studies conclusively testing whether it works on mild covid or not, just retrospective analysis colored by biased sampling).
When they saw it was eating away at his polling, on it went: doom, gloom, fear, panic!
Massachusetts got whacked hard in March and April, but not that hard. One hospital in the city of Boston filled to capacity but the other 4 big ones were below half capacity. Still, "zomg the hospitals are overrun!"
By May, there were more covid tests available than they knew what to do with around here and doctor's offices in the suburbs were pushing asymptomatic tests on anyone coming in for a sprained ankle. But even then, the *local* media were still reporting "zomg we're flying blind!"
Some of it is just "if it bleeds it leads" mixed with good old fashioned scientific illiteracy and residual panic and embarrassment from earlier predictions of "it's no big deal and don't be racist against asians" very quickly turning into the real deal.
But some of it was just naked partisanship.
And a year of scaring the shit out of the population has finally caught up with the chattering classes who are finding it especially difficult to show positivity now that their guy is in charge and it's his problem and it's they're voters that are the most traumatized and still scared shitless.
Covid was a test. A large fraction of America failed a large fraction of it, between the mass panic and the mass cowardice (still no in person schools in a lot of places) and the mass misinformation that very possibly cost livelihoods and lives.
I hope to God we'll move past this, but I fear that a lot of grudges will continue to be nursed for a very long time after this blows over.
Re: (Score:3)
I see grudges from this in my workplace already:
There are groups of us who continued to phsyciallycome into work through the whole thing because it was necessary and could not be done remotely. We took careful precautions, worked separately, and are all pretty much fine.
There's another lareger group that worked from home: Ironically, a lot of them ended up getting COVID anyway.
Now that we're starting to open up, the home workers are very much "well, we're not sure if we're safe coming in, is this cleaned, i
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost like having more people in the office would make it harder to maintain physical distancing.
Secondly, a lot of them love remote work and perform better - but they know the management still won't take that argument.
Re: (Score:2)
If you have two reasons, with one weighted at 80% and the other weighted at 20%, you are not required to mention the 80% reason if it will be disregarded, doesn't help your case, and may make management actively hostile toward you. That would not be lying or even lying by omission because both reasons are still valid on their own.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't agree with that reasoning.
If the 20% reason were resolved to your satisfaction, you'd still have 4x the desire to stay home that you had originally indicated. It is very much a lie of omission because the implication of stating the 20% reason is that if your boss resolves it to your mutual satisfaction (expending time and money doing so), you'll come in.
I would feel lied to if I were on the receiving end of it, and I would feel like a liar if I were the one doing it.
Now here you (and lots of people)
Re: (Score:2)
If both reasons are valid on their own, it doesn't matter if you have more than one reason.
Re: No shit (Score:2)
If the second one is a deal breaker then, yeah, you're lying if you omit it.
Re: (Score:2)
But if it's not a dealbreaker and just nice to have, then you're not.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not really that hard... "If you want to say home and can do your job from home, then we encourage you to continue with this. If you need to or want to come to work then follow the rules, get your temperature taken at the door it only takes 3 seconds, wear your mask when not in your cubicle, try the best you can to practice social distancing, wash your hands." Similar to the same the rules you follow when visiting the doctor or dentist or other places of business.
Re: (Score:2)
By May, there were more covid tests available than they knew what to do with around here and doctor's offices in the suburbs were pushing asymptomatic tests on anyone coming in for a sprained ankle. But even then, the *local* media were still reporting "zomg we're flying blind!"
If people aren't taking tests except in cases of severe illness, you really are flying blind. Testing asymptomatic people is a good way of actually tracking what's going on rather than making guesses. It has a good chance of lowering the testing positivity rate which a lot of states relied on to determine what level of restrictions were needed to keep the spread at a manageable level.
Re: (Score:2)
How many stay at home the whole time? There can't possibly be enough people working the grocery delivery companies to service every household. I went hardly anywhere, but the least safe place I went was the grocery store. I mostly worked at home but my kid was in a small home-based daycare with a few other kids, which great increased my overall exposure.
Getting negative tests is good/fine. I'm not sure what's wrong with that. A huge percentage of the community spread has been asymptomatic and the only
Re: (Score:2)
Very few people were staying home the whole time. We still need to eat, and not all of us are entitled and upscale enough to have expendible essential workers deliver our food to us the entire time. We also had to go visit the doctor and the dentist.
But if someone actually did stay home the whole time, with zero interactions at the front door with any other human, then presumably having the test on them is fine because it would *lower* the actual case numbers which would make everyone feel better about th
Re: (Score:3)
Well, Trump was indeed asleep at the wheel. Or not looking straight ahead. He had more information than anyone else in the country and ignored it. So while most of us were thinking "this lockdown will only be a month or two" the president *knew* it would last much much longer unless there was better mitigation. So his solution was to blame China (gotta have blame, this is politics after all), block travel from China with no quarantine for anyone actually allowed in, he dismissed the idea of masks as bei
Re:No shit (Score:4, Insightful)
A year later and "Trump was asleep at the wheel" is looking less true than it did right in the thick of it.
We've been essentially isolated from Europe for a year. Our numbers and their numbers are close enough to each other to not be worth quibbling over. We were hobbled by media distrust and political posturing all around. They were hobbled by the fact that while we tend to live in nice sprawled suburbs and drive even down the street, they live mostly nose-to-tail in multiunit buildings and need to use public transit in order to function.
Trump leaned into throwing money on therapeutics and vaccines. At this time, that looks like it was a good bet given we're cranking out several million shots a day while the Europeans are below that rate over a larger population.
Trump leaned against mass lockdowns and toward continued economic activity. At this time, that looks like it was a good bet considering the normalization of mass house arrest across the Atlantic and the attendant economic ruin it entails (though you can't tell as easily; the European welfare state tends to mask lost economic output by paying people to not work, making the loss of activity not as apparent because people are payed even though factories are idle).
Trump was also the target of a mass "resistance" campaign over the three years prior to the start of the pandemic. That erased any chance of the him having the benefit of the doubt or any rally around the flag in a crisis the way Europe, Australia, and NZ had. The infuriating (literally, and regretfully) thing is that most of that campaign was based on bullshit rather than real evidence of malfeasance. It would have been bad if Trump were actually an open crook who sold us out to Mother Russia, meriting extreme skepticism. But he wasn't. He was just a blunt guy whose politics the media didn't agree with. But they blew him up into a ten-foot-tall Hitler-spawn in so many people's eyes that when he said "vaccine," half the Democratic Party, including the current sitting Vice President, turned anti-vaxxer on a dime.
Absolutely maddening. People will remember this failing of the national media to inform the public. It's one of those grudges I alluded to that I fear will not go away. And when the next crisis hits, people will assume that it's Baghdad Bob sounding the alarm and act accordingly. It will not be pretty.
Re: No shit (Score:3)
Well when I look at large developed countries in Europe, I see a bigger portion of population that did worse than did better. With the proviso that few did that well at all.
Re: (Score:2)
And on it went all summer. Moderna and Biontech were manufacturing small batch doses to test a vaccine as early as February and March, but it was new tech and Trump's Operation Warp Speed leaning into it was just more fodder for the "omg he's selling snake oil" angle that started with HCQ and zinc (btw still no prospective randomized control studies conclusively testing whether it works on mild covid or not, just retrospective analysis colored by biased sampling).
Operation Warp Speed wasn't announced until the middle of May. [defense.gov] I'm not sure why you mention it in a paragraph about the events of February and March.
Massachusetts got whacked hard in March and April, but not that hard. One hospital in the city of Boston filled to capacity but the other 4 big ones were below half capacity. Still, "zomg the hospitals are overrun!"
Why in the world would you mention Massachusetts in the context of getting "whacked hard" by Covid in March instead of New York [ctvnews.ca] and New Jersey [nj.com]?
Next up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
No positive stories about mass shootings.
Reporting of mass shootings depends on the shooter name. The instant we learn it's middle eastern the story starts circling the drain into the memory hole.
The truth is no one really cares any more. The "that's just life in the big city" narrative the establishment pushes when copping out on terrorist attacks applies to all of these events. Another known wolf shoots a bunch of people, it's a news cycle, and it's on the the next narrative.
Re:Next up (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, and the one last week in the massage parlors....strangely had NO immediate calls for gun control, since the shooter there used a pistol.
As soon as a semi-automatic "scary looking" rifle was used, out come the crys for weapon bans. One used a handgun and apparently this last one used an AR style rifle...and yet for all the calls for banning semi-auto rifles and standard capacity magazines...the death count was pretty close between the two.
But hey, let's not let facts get in the way of which is FAR more likely to kill you in a gun related death situation.
(Hint, it is the handgun.)
Re:Next up (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, why would anyone think there are going to be positive stories about a pandemic?
Scientific Report: New vaccines are 90% effective in reducing transmission of COVID-19
Headline: Even after vaccination, 10% will still be vulnerable to COVID-19
Report: Infection rates down to the lowest rate since March
Headline: 500,000 people have now died from COVID-19, infection rates still above February levels
There should be positive stories in a pandemic when there is positive news. Which there is. It's not covered that way.
The vaccine coverage is a glaring example. The vaccines work better than anyone could have hoped for. It's, seriously, best possible case scenario, barring some sort of miracle drug. But you would never know that from reading the stories about them. Medical experts have come out and said as much, that the news coverage is actively hurting vaccination efforts.
Re: (Score:2)
I still think that without these headlines, people would get the shot and immediately ignore all restrictions and safety measures without waiting for a significant number of the population to get theirs. And put themselves and others at risk.
It might be misguided, but people seem to be starting to ignore sound medical advice through sheer exhaustion alone. Making the headlines too positive could be directly responsible for deaths and illness.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think the media has an obligation to hide the news?
I call that worthless and wish the US had alternative from mainstream lib and foxnews lib media.
Re: (Score:2)
Given how far negative the Covid19 stats have gone, the positives need to be substantial before they're worth celebrating.
Likewise, I'm sure a lowering in shooting rates will get plenty of coverage once there is a real positive swing in the stats. Not sure if anyone here will still be alive to see it though.
COVID Deniers (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA was also the only country where a significant portion of the population consisted of COVID deniers: people who either refused to believe that the disease existed at all, refused to believe it was any more serious than the flu, and/or thought the whole thing was a conspiracy meant to inject people with tracking microchips and/or discredit President Trump and/or do something else nefarious.
Maybe the negative coverage was an attempt to get those Covidiots to take the disease seriously.
Re: (Score:2)
I think there's a big element to this. Just because there was some positive news -- promising vaccine trials, testing improvements, or some regional drop in case loads -- it didn't mean that the pandemic was over or you could simply just stop doing mitigation. It also seems like in a lot of places when people did back off, we got second waves and upticks in case loads.
IMHO, had covid denail not being a thing and there was no chance that every slightly positive bit of news wasn't going to get distorted and
Re:COVID Deniers (Score:4, Insightful)
The USA was also the only country where a significant portion of the population consisted of COVID deniers: people who either refused to believe that the disease existed at all, refused to believe it was any more serious than the flu, and/or thought the whole thing was a conspiracy meant to inject people with tracking microchips and/or discredit President Trump and/or do something else nefarious.
Maybe the negative coverage was an attempt to get those Covidiots to take the disease seriously.
I think that's part of it.
The USA was a very unusual country where the head of state was not only actively downplaying the disease and encouraging the public not to take precautions, but the head of state was also unusually headline driven.
As such the media was very cautious about publishing positive stories as the President would be very likely to take a positive story and make it part of his disinformation campaign. And for news organizations where reputation is everything a disinformation campaign is the last thing you want to be associated with.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah because lying to people who can look out their window and see that you are a lying sack of shit is a great strategy for getting them to trust you take you seriously. Covid as the media portrayed it absolutely WAS A HOAX.
They told us hospitals were full when they were not. They dramatically misrepresented the risk, they tried to tell us less strict lock down polices in places like FL and TN were failing when the outcomes were essentially no different than other places. So many obvious lies. Why would t
Re: (Score:2)
They also failed to admit that hospitals normally like to run at 80% capacity to be profitable. For a small hospital, FOUR additional patients pushed them to 100%
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of the hospital issue is also personnel bandwidth.
Saying the hospitals aren't full because there are some empty beds is like the CIO screaming about programming deadlines because there's extra infrastructure capacity.
Empty beds don't take care of patients, nurses and doctors do, and ICU patients require skilled ICU care. To extend the IT analogy, help desk people and printer repair can't expand your programming staff.
I think a lot of the "HOAX THE HOSPITALS ARE EMPTY" was bullshit, too, as a lot of ad
Re: (Score:3)
The USA was also the only country where a significant portion of the population consisted of COVID deniers:
The only country? You need to get out of your basement more often, and look at the rest of the world.
outrage (Score:2)
Seems like all media (internet, news, etc) does its best to get your attention with shock and outrage. We've created a system that solves for outrage to capture and try to keep our attention. And all the players act like its a zero sum game, they want all of the eyeballs all of the time. What could go wrong?
Raw data is there, if you care to look (Score:4, Interesting)
Now four weeks after the slope change in the new cases plot, the death rate is still showing the good trend. Death rate peaked on Jan 12, 4400 a day 7 day moving average. Just a 3 day lag. So we can be reasonably certain the fall in death rate is real, not some artefact of delayed reporting or phase lags.
This is very good news, I am no epidemiologist, but I see the flattening of the new cases report as a sort of good news. These are people getting infected and reported without actually being hospitalized or dying. The hospitalization rate also shows the same good downward trend with decent slope, though it seems to show signs of flattening out. I think this indicates the majority of the vulnerable population has been vaccinated, the remaining people are shaking it off like flu. With 25% of the population with one dose, and probably 25% of the people who are already infected and recovered, we are approaching the early thresholds for herd immunity.
If new variants do not emerge the end seems to be in sight. There are reasons to be optimistic, but optimism does not sell news papers, does not garner eye balls, nor clicks.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a disservice to the American people. They are actively making them less informed. However, the former president has only made the media dig in their
Re: (Score:2)
For my part I now subscribe to four news papers digitally, and four magazines. Hoping to include a few more. One thing people can do to improve news is to pay for good news.
"Everything's Peachy" doesn't sell (Score:2)
Most people buy/watch news to make themselves feel better about their own lives compared to people suffering worse somewhere else. They literally do not want to hear about things being great or looking up.
Political motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
Most all news organizations are not neutral politically (https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart), with the majority of news organizations leaning to the left. These left-leaning organizations hate Trump with a passion, especially since he literally picked fights with them on a regular basis. The worse the news about COVID, the more poorly it reflects on the sitting president. This was also an election year. Thus it was in the best interests of the agenda-motivated media to drum up as much negative COVID news as possible in order to sway opinion about Trump.
I think most anyone is not naive enough to believe the mainstream media would have covered COVID in the exact same way if Biden was president during that time.
Re: (Score:2)
I think most anyone is not naive enough to believe the mainstream media would have covered COVID in the exact same way if Biden was president during that time.
You clearly have not read the other comments on this article.
If it bleeds it leads. (Score:2)
Hence it's not surprising at all that media put a lot of emphasis on the bad things that happen. And here I'm talking about what is perceived as bad by their viewers or what they think the viewers think is bad. And as long as the ratings don't drop they see no reason to change the narrative.
That's a pattern you can observe in virtually all kinds of media outlet. Playing the fears of people is what gets you attention from those people. Be it the current pandemi
Orange man bad. (Score:2, Interesting)
Well yeah, because any spin other than "We are all going to die because Trump" is unacceptable.
Yes, he was a jackass, and not a great president, but I am very skeptical that with anyone else in office, regardless of party, it would have been any different. In my opinion it all goes back to Fauci lying about the masks at the start of it. I understand why he did it, but that really kicked off the lack of trust a lot of people have for what the government is telling them to do. Combine that with the blatant
Re:Orange man bad. (Score:4, Informative)
Also don't forget that this [voanews.com] happened a few days after Trump started restricting flights to China:
The director-general of the World Health Organization is urging countries not to close their borders to foreigners traveling from China, in response to the coronavirus epidemic in that country. More than 17,000 cases, including 361 deaths have been confirmed in China.
The WHO chief made his appeal at the opening of the agency’s Executive Board, which meets annually to set WHO health policy.
The United States, Australia, Singapore and a growing number of other countries are denying entry to foreigners traveling from China in an effort to limit the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Gee thanks Tedros, what a great call. /s
Re: (Score:2)
Trump politicized the pandemic and if Fauci hadn't made the mistake with masks, some other well intentioned mistake would have been amplified to justify the politicization of pandemic management.
Literally no human alive has managed a pandemic of this scale, especially not a novel pandemic, and mistakes from experts were inevitable. I don't count Trump's politicization of this as a mistake, either, as he was deliberately manipulative for his own political benefit.
Worse yet, his voting base were more or less
welcome to reality (Score:2)
What the science says and what the government-media complex tells you it says are not the same.
Edith Efron documents in The Apocalyptics [amazon.com] how journalists and government concocted and hyped the fake environmental cancer epidemic of the late 70's and 80's, when in reality cancer rates were not increasing and that's exactly what reports in medical and science journals stated at the time stated.
Then we had decades of the also totally fake dietary fat scare; Government and the media warned frequently and insisten
Propaganda (Score:2)
Good (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, when someone is prescribed antibiotics or some other medication, they are told they need to take the entire amount. Instead, how many people do you know stop taking their medication after a few days when they start feeling better?
Re: (Score:3)
For example, when someone is prescribed antibiotics or some other medication, they are told they need to take the entire amount. Instead, how many people do you know stop taking their medication after a few days when they start feeling better?
I don't know, but I'd probably trust a few surveys on it that didn't refer to people as "the morons in the midwest and the south" more than your opinion.
Re: (Score:2)
I live in the Midwest. There really are morons here. I am sure they were only referring to the morons and not everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
There are morons everywhere.
They are pretty evenly spread throughout the population all over the US.
Re: (Score:2)
None. I think. Though I occasionally wonder about my sister-in-law.
Of course, I grew up in a military family. If the doctor said "take two of these a day till they're gone", then by God, you WILL take two a day till they're gone....
Re: Good (Score:2)
Slashdot is the same (Score:2)
Any post here that dared to question the orthodoxy of the imminent sky-falling was immediately modded to oblivion.
I'm not talking about posts dismissing COVID, I'm talking about any post that even *slightly* veered away from the 'everything is fucking terrible' dogma.
We live in an era of consensual, manufactured hysteria.
Because the Average Human is pretty dumb (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If it bleeds, it leads (Score:3)
Which explains why people VASTLY overestimate risk (Score:2)
Once upon a time... (Score:2)
News was a loss leader, exempt from the ratings machine that drives all other media. Then all of that changed and ratings started to drive the news. Do you think it's a coincidence that nearly all the news people look like fashion models and the ladies wear short skirts?
News has morphed into a sort of Entertainment Tonight/National Enquirer/Reality Show mix where the goal is NOT to report facts but to entertain and/or freighten people. I remember when Covid first started and the evening news spun horror sto
Re: (Score:2)
Hate the lack of edit function combined with still being half asleep - admirable (not admiral); strongly correlated (not strongly reported).
Re: (Score:2)
One positive spin is the tiny reduction in Boomers. They've become obstacles to progress and are too old to understand tech therefore unfit to participate in running the world. Being tech-illiterate is equivalent to being illiterate and inexcusable in someone who had decades to learn but chose otherwise.
https://nymag.com/intelligence... [nymag.com]
Death is an immense asset to our species. Death makes us adaptable. Death gives new life by recycling old life. Individuals inevitable evolved to fear death but that's their
Re: (Score:2)
Worse than a simple flu? Sure. The end of the world as we know it? No. It just isn't. It has been WAY over played by the media, in the name of profits.
Just like how now everyone is scared to go to the grocery store or be Asian. Fear sells. Fear drives agendas.
Re: (Score:2)
It is deadly if you are over 65, super out of shape or have other major co-morbidities. The rest of the planet is and will be just fine.
It's mostly young people getting hospitalized here in BC now. Between old people getting vaccinated and the new variants, there is mostly lots of 30-40 year olds being admitted who can't breathe. Now the hospitals have gotten pretty good about keeping those people alive, but they're never going to be the same again.
So basically if you're over 24, it can be life changing.
Re: (Score:2)