The P&R Plague Thread (Covid-19)

NUance said:
I think her point wasn't so much that there should be positive news about Covid, but that the volume of stories in U.S. coverage contained so many more negative stories than elsewhere in the world.  Or as she said, "dramatically more negative coverage than international, regional and scientific news sources."   Her secondary point was that the negative coverage appeared to be politicized.  I agree with both those points.  Covid is a deadly virus, somewhat worse than SARS was, and comparable to measles  for deadliness and contagiousness.  (Although measles is pretty much under control now).  
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Her opinion piece appeared to be yet another attack on the MSM by the woke right. She offers no specifics, vaguely cites one study, and offers no examples of "better" Covid coverage.

If people were informed by that, awesome. 

 
commando said:
there were going to be deaths.  if we had all joined together in the effort to defeat corona those numbers would have been smaller.    but we had political rallys and protests.   people refusing to wear mask.  idiots getting mad and coughing on each other.    we can't know how many fewer deaths we could have had.....but we had plenty of people not doing their part to help control the virus.   there were even covid parties to try and get everyone infected.   we had plenty of covidiots doing all they could to push the death count higher.
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+1 for proper contextual use of the term "covidiots".   lol  :lol:

 
knapplc said:
Her opinion piece appeared to be yet another attack on the MSM by the woke right. She offers no specifics, vaguely cites one study, and offers no examples of "better" Covid coverage.

If people were informed by that, awesome. 
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Do you think MSM provides fair and balanced news coverage?  What about MSNBC, NPR or CNN[SIZE=11pt]—[/SIZE]do you think they are fair and balanced?    

 
NUance said:
Do you think MSM provides fair and balanced news coverage?  What about MSNBC, NPR or CNN[SIZE=11pt]—[/SIZE]do you think they are fair and balanced?    
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I think NPR does a great job of providing fact-based news.

I don't watch CNN or MSNBC, so I can't give an opinion. I also don't think there's any such thing as "the MSM" because... what is it? Fox News is the most-watched "news" source out there, so wouldn't they necessarily be the "main-stream media?" But they're the ones railing against the MSM all the time. 

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC... these are not homogenous news sources. They don't cover the same news in the same way, so if we're calling them "the MSM" that's kind of a misnomer, isn't it?

The origins of the term "MSM" are right-wing complainers who want to discredit everything that isn't their slant of ideology. It's a preemptive trigger word used to instantly cast doubt on anything the utterer wants doubted. I tend to take criticism of "the MSM" with a huge grain of salt. 

 
knapplc said:
I think NPR does a great job of providing fact-based news.

I don't watch CNN or MSNBC, so I can't give an opinion. I also don't think there's any such thing as "the MSM" because... what is it? Fox News is the most-watched "news" source out there, so wouldn't they necessarily be the "main-stream media?" But they're the ones railing against the MSM all the time. 

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC... these are not homogenous news sources. They don't cover the same news in the same way, so if we're calling them "the MSM" that's kind of a misnomer, isn't it?

The origins of the term "MSM" are right-wing complainers who want to discredit everything that isn't their slant of ideology. It's a preemptive trigger word used to instantly cast doubt on anything the utterer wants doubted. I tend to take criticism of "the MSM" with a huge grain of salt. 
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The media has become so polarized in the past decade or so that it's nearly impossible to find unbiased reporting.  Nearly every source is either right-leaning or left-leaning.  The left-leaning sources seem to out number the right-leaning sources.  Almost all news sources slant stories to suit their agenda.  

The most unbiased news source today is Reuters.  I used to love NPR.  A lot of people still like NPR.  But I can't stand them anymore. 

/jmho  

 
IMO one the biggest problems with that op-ed is it largely ignores the elephant in the room when it comes to media and journalism consumption. From what I can tell, she has one line about:

They do, however, suggest that media coverage is driven by audience appetite, (and people tend to want bad news for reasons that require more psychological analysis than I can do here).
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There's no 'suggesting' necessary or 'more psychological analysis' required. We've known this to be true for decades. It's why a feel-good story about a cancer survivor doesn't gear near the eye balls that a triple homicide does.

I do genuinely try hard to not be a media apologist here. Many news organizations are incredibly guilty of positioning content to shock and disturb vs. tell something like it is, but people have shown tendencies to prefer the former. I just don't think the conversation can be had by ostentatiously positioning oneself on one side of the debate or the other, and she pretty clearly plants her flag on one side.

I would also position that this is/was a pandemic. 'Good news' was always going to be hard to come by until vaccines came out and people began to get the situation under control. I don't want any news organization to paint a happy picture onto something that isn't happy. It 100% make senses that a majority of content would be negative.

 
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NUance said:
The media has become so polarized in the past decade or so that it's nearly impossible to find unbiased reporting.  Nearly every source is either right-leaning or left-leaning.  The left-leaning sources seem to out number the right-leaning sources.  Almost all news sources slant stories to suit their agenda.  

The most unbiased news source today is Reuters.  I used to love NPR.  A lot of people still like NPR.  But I can't stand them anymore. 

/jmho  
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I agree with the polarization, but I think that's more prevalent in broadcast media. I stick to print exclusively. Any time I see a clip of CNN or Fox it's just people yelling and trying to dunk on each other. It's like really bad reality TV. I think that's a huge rot in American culture that I wish more people would turn away from. No good comes from that.

A long time ago I decided to cast a wide net around the country, and followed a bunch of big and little papers across the country. I get a lot of weird local news in my twitter timeline that doesn't pertain to me, but I also get a really broad perspective on a lot of national news. 

 
knapplc said:
A long time ago I decided to cast a wide net around the country, and followed a bunch of big and little papers across the country. I get a lot of weird local news in my twitter timeline that doesn't pertain to me, but I also get a really broad perspective on a lot of national news. 
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I don't always agree with you knapplc, but this might be one of the best things I have done.

I also check some international news sources as well. When checking twitter for news, I often need to put a mental filter on in my head because things can be tricky to figure out what is noise/fake and what is real. This is especially true for some countries were I can only get information from twitter and other social media. It helps when I can personally verify things with people I know in those places. 

 
Sometimes I wonder what the pandemic response would have been if it made people poop out of their mouths. Or if it killed 5 year olds at a higher rate.

 
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Enhance said:
I would also position that this is/was a pandemic. 'Good news' was always going to be hard to come by until vaccines came out and people began to get the situation under control. I don't want any news organization to paint a happy picture onto something that isn't happy. It 100% make senses that a majority of content would be negative.
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When I was reading this thread, I kept thinking to myself, what positive news stories could have been told last summer about the pandemic?  I fail to come up with something.

Also, how many more covidiots would have we had if 50% of the pandemic stories were "feel good"?

 
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https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/30/stimulus-check-update-senators-push-biden-to-send-recurring-payments.html

  • Twenty-one Senate Democrats led by Ron Wyden are pushing President Joe Biden to include recurring direct payments and an extension of jobless benefits in his economic recovery plan.

    [*]They want the aid tied to economic conditions so it does not lapse too early.

    [*]Biden plans to unveil his infrastructure and recovery proposal Wednesday.
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More Senate Democrats are pressuring President Joe Biden to extend rescue measures as the U.S. recovers from a coronavirus-fueled economic drubbing.

Twenty-one members of the Senate Democratic caucus wrote to the president Tuesday urging him to include recurring direct payments and enhanced jobless benefits as part of his recovery plan.
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