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“How Does This Make Trump Look?”
The new standard of journalism is terrible for everyone except Donald Trump.
Now that the U.S. and other countries around the world have learned a bit more about Covid-19- most particularly that it does not seem to be as deadly as experts first feared- measured steps are being taken to re-open closed sections of the economy.
These re-openings are being done, almost without exception, under the guidance of the best public health experts, using the best information available. Of course experts, it must be said, don’t always agree. Nor are they always right.
Good thing setting responsible health policy doesn’t require certainty. If it did, we’d be in serious trouble.
But the press has an unfortunate habit of finding and amplifying only the experts making dire predictions, for clicks or in hopes of hurting Trump’s reelection chances; and it is telling. Especially since it isn’t all that new or even unique to the Trump administration or this particular disaster.
After 9/11, the public had to be encouraged by mental health experts in the direct aftermath of that terrible day to stop watching the footage being played on endless loops on television, stop reading about it.
Today, members of media are still writing hyperbolic, misleading, hysterical, attention-grabbing…