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Close-up of the coronavirus.
Photo: Centers For Disease Control And Prevention /Close-up of the coronavirus.
Close-up of the coronavirus.
Close-up of the coronavirus.
President Donald Trump last week lashed out at MSNBC and CNN for trying to the make the coronavirus “look as bad as possible.”
Trump’s supporters in the media told their audiences that news outfits were exaggerating the threat of the coronavirus to hurt his chances for re-election.
What nonsense.
The coronavirus is a big deal. How the U.S. responds to it deserves in-depth coverage.
This was the situation at the end of last week:
More than 80,000 coronavirus cases had been confirmed globally — the vast majority in China, where the virus struck in late 2019. Nearly 3,000 people worldwide had died from it.
Cases in Italy, Iran, South Korea and other countries stoked worries that the virus is continuing to spread and will severely damage economies around the world. That caused the stock market to tumble.
As of Saturday, 71 cases were confirmed in the U.S., including a death in Washington state. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that many more cases were likely.
“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a news briefing early last week.
Her “not if but when” statement received wide coverage by the news media. Soon after, Trump posted a tweet that began, “Low Ratings Fake News.”
He went on to say that the MSNBC and CNN cable news channels “are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible.”
He misspelled coronavirus. To spell and pronounce it correctly, think “corona” (circle) and “virus.”
Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said the coronavirus, which attacks the respiratory system, is just “a common cold.”
He said members of the media “would love for the coronavirus to be the deadly strain that wipes everybody out so they could blame Trump for it.”
On the Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity lambasted the “mob in the media” and said news outlets failed to tell the public that the Trump administration has been “aggressively responding to the corona outbreak for quite a while.”
On “Fox & Friends,” the hosts said prominent Democrats and news organizations were over-playing coronavirus to hurt Trump.
“They shouldn’t make it political,” said Ainsley Earhardt.
In a briefing at the White House, Trump announced that the government’s response to the coronavirus would be coordinated by Vice President Mike Pence and not a public-health expert.
Before commenting on the coronavirus publicly, anyone in the federal government must clear it with Pence.
I wondered if he would facilitate or block the flow of information about the coronavirus to the news media and then to us.
Paul Janensch, of Bridgeport, was a newspaper editor and taught journalism at Quinnipiac University. Email: paul.janensch@quinnipiac.edu.
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