90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, March 27, 2020

3 Big Media Misses During the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has become a health crisis that’s almost unprecedented in our lifetimes.

As our country and the world race to contain the spread of COVID-19, it’s important that we all stay informed on how to protect ourselves and our families and neighbors.

This is a time for journalists in a free country to demonstrate how they can bring vital and accurate information to the public when it’s needed most.

Many journalists have been doing just that, and at great risk.

Unfortunately, the media has made some serious missteps in recent months and acted unseriously in this serious time.

Here are three big media misses during the coronavirus pandemic.

1. Attacking Travel Bans

While there is certainly more that Americans and the Trump administration could have done in preparation for the tidal wave that has been the coronavirus outbreak, one early decision likely made a big difference in controlling its scope.

On Jan. 31, the Trump administration instituted a travel ban to stop the flow of infected people from China to the United States.

“The travel ban with China made a difference,” Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and current head of the global health initiative Resolve to Save Lives, told USA Today.

“It resulted in a significant delay in the number of people coming in with infection and because of that, that bought time in the U.S. to better prepare,” Frieden said. “And yet, that time wasn’t optimally used.”

However, critics of the Trump administration roundly attacked the China travel ban as ineffectual, anti-science, and xenophobic.

My colleague, Lyndsey Fifield, had an excellent breakdown on Twitter of the media’s coverage of the travel ban.

At the time, the World Health Organization recommended against travel bans because it was relying on China’s disinformation and failure to report person-to-person transmission of COVID-19.

Good on the administration not to rely on information that had gone through the filter of the Chinese communist government, which clearly has been dishonest about the outbreak since the beginning.

But media outlets didn’t stop with attacks on the administration’s China travel ban. They also widely condemned the more recent restriction on travel from Europe—some calling this move a product of xenophobia as well.

The fact is, contrary to the idea that viruses don’t recognize borders, borders are an important method to limit contact with people infected in a global pandemic. It’s the transmission between individuals that causes COVID-19 to spread quickly, one of the reasons why our whole country is practicing various forms of social distancing and in some places is in near total lockdown.

The idea that the federal government took precautions and shut down borders to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is anathema in a media environment in which the concept of borderless societies is taken as a given.

But if this moment demonstrates anything, it’s that border enforcement matters. It matters not just because of issues such as crime, culture, terrorism, and economics, but also in the realm of public health.

2. ‘China Virus’ Language Policing

Working alongside the attacks on travel restrictions is the media’s ridiculous and unserious condemnation of those who call the new coronavirus the “Chinese virus,” “China virus,” “Wuhan virus,” or any other name that links the pandemic to its country of origin.

In January and February, most media outlets had no problem using the terms China virus or Wuhan virus. But suddenly a switch flipped, and prominent journalists began to attack these terms as racist.

This flip-flop followed a wave of Chinese propaganda aimed at attacking the term “China virus” as racist and linking the outbreak to the United States.

It was a jarring reminder of the unserious nature of “woke” culture that at a press conference the day after Trump used the phrase “Chinese virus” on Twitter, he received four questions about it.

Clearly, when the nation is shut down due to the most threatening pandemic since the Spanish flu and Americans are facing mass unemployment and possibly a deep recession, our esteemed press is doing the all important work of language policing.

3. Trump Derangement and Fish Bowl Fluid

Unfortunately, this big media miss may make it more difficult to...

NBC reporter criticized over article touting China as 'global leader' in coronavirus response

NBC reporter Ken Dilanian faced a wave of backlash Thursday after penning an article in which he suggested that China's coronavirus response was helping it overtake the United States as a global superpower.

The article -- titled "As U.S. struggles to stem coronavirus, China asserts itself as global leader" -- starts by highlighting Chinese aid to Italy.

"With Italy in dire need of medical equipment, an economic superpower stepped in to help. No, not the United States," Dilanian wrote. "It was China."

When Dilanian tweeted that intro, many pushed back on social media.

"You mean after they essentially burned down the world and contributed to the deaths of thousands they’re offering up one little care package?" conservative commentator Dana Loesch tweeted.

Commentator Stephen L. Miller quipped: "Has NBC registered under FARA yet?" He was referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires that agents of foreign governments publicly disclose that...

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation accused Snapchat and Teen Vogue of encouraging teens to create child pornography by sexting during the coronavirus pandemic.

The center is urging Teen Vogue and Snapchat to stop using their platforms to endanger children.

“Snapchat and Teen Vogue are playing right into sexual predators’ hands,” said National Center on Sexual Exploitation executive director Dawn Hawkins.

Snapchat and Teen Vogue are encouraging teenagers to create “child pornography” during the coronavirus quarantine through sexting, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said.

The center, which fights child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography urged Teen Vogue on Wednesday to stop encouraging teens “to create child sexual abuse material (child pornography) by sexting during quarantine.”

The group is also pressing Snapchat to stop promoting Teen Vogue’s messages through Snapchat’s Discover feature, which offers news and video content. The social media app, which is popular among teenagers, boasted 218 million daily active users worldwide as of the fourth quarter of 2019. Nearly half of those users who watch the Discover feature watch it daily.

“Snapchat and Teen Vogue are playing right into sexual predators’ hands,” said National Center on Sexual Exploitation executive director and senior vice president Dawn Hawkins in a statement.

She added: “With the likely surge of young viewers on Snapchat due to quarantine, it is socially irresponsible for Snapchat Discover to encourage minors to self-produce underage pornography (i.e. child sexual abuse materials), thereby increasing their vulnerability to sexual predators.”

NCSE noted that encouraging teenagers to sext is encouraging minors to create and distribute child pornography, also called child sex abuse material.

“Online predators use social media platforms to pose as peers and groom children to send them sexually explicit material (i.e. ‘sext’ with them) that they can then distribute and/or use to blackmail the child into other forms of sexual exploitation,” NCSE said.
“What Teen Vogue is doing by promoting sexing to teens is insidious and harmful,” Hawkins told the DCNF. “Given what we know about the brain development of adolescents, it is clear that discussing ‘the importance of consent’ while promoting sexting for minors does not protect those minors from the dangers of sexting — even coerced sexting. The law generally does not recognize minors’ ability to consent.”

NSCE references several examples of Teen Vogue encouraging teenagers to sext during the quarantine through photos provided to the DCNF.

“Like anything worth doing, sexting takes practice,” says a Monday Teen Vogue story on the Snapchat Discover page. “Here are 7 things you might not have known about sexting.”

“Sexting should make you feel good,” a Monday Teen Vogue Discover story said.

Another read: “Sending someone details about what you want to do to them and getting back even more detail about what they want to do to you should be fun, easy, and ultimately joyful. Anything less than that isn’t worth your time.”

“If you’re in the early stages of your romance, you cant still forge an emotional bond with your new boo by texting and Facetime,” another Saturday photo said. “There are all kinds of creative, fun ways to sext, if you’re at...