Ah, the Law of Unintended Consequences!
It doesn’t apply just to government programs. It also applies to journalistic crusades.
What am I talking about?
Well, by now, it is pretty clear that the mask mandates, social distancing efforts, and lockdown policies have not worked very well, if at all. But that hasn’t stopped corporate newsmedia.
From what?
From inducing panic by playing up the negative aspects of the COVID epidemic, and downplaying — even suppressing — information that would mitigate . . . their propagation of panic.
And policies of an extreme nature.
Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason, calls our attention to recent research: “Based on an analysis of news stories about COVID-19 that appeared from January 1 through July 31, Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote and two other researchers found that 91 percent of the coverage by major U.S. media outlets was ‘negative in tone.’ The rate was substantially lower in leading scientific journals (65 percent) and foreign news sources (54 percent).”
It has consequences: “This unrelenting, indiscriminate negativity fosters suspicion and resistance. Journalists and politicians who repeatedly cry wolf should not be surprised at the lack of cooperation when the beast actually appears.”
Which suggests that corporate media’s approach to the disease and our responses to it has had effects quite the opposite of what leftist Yellow Journalists aim: total government control of the populace in the cause of fighting a disease.
By overstating their case, and even flagrantly fibbing, they may be inoculating us from the very disease they promote.
That disease being not COVID, of course, but Therapeutic Totalitarianism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Prognosis: Negative”
How do you know that masking and distancing don’t work? There are way too many people who have ignored the guidelines for them to work. This is one of the most selfish countries in the world.
There were no ‘unintended consequences’ from the hype and panic of COVID. It decimated, if not derailed, the economy and got Trump voted out. For the media, Democrats and all freedom-hating people, this was ‘mission accomplished’.
Of course all of us will have to deal with the negative ramifications of this operation, but that’s a story for another day.
I agree with most of what you stated. The only area where I disagree is the election. Most of the election problems were sheer fraud, in the machines, in the illegal “ballot dumps” after the election was actually over, the illegal votes.
If there is any justice left, this will all come out in spite of the “media”.