WaPo: Draft report predicts covid-19 cases will reach 200,000 a day by June 1
NPR Fact Check: Trump Administration Document And Its 3,000 Deaths A Day Scenario
CNN: Trump downplays models projecting Covid-19 death increases
This whole episode demonstrates how much is wrong with the journalism today and how it has evolved into a machine that doesn't appropriately inform the public but pushes the sentiments of journalists, ratchets up the hysteria, and divides the country. Should responsible media really use the word "carnage" to describe the model results, or is that geared towards making it more dramatic?
Many questions arise for me when reading the story:
Why didn't the NPR fact-check actually provide context for the prediction?
- Why didn't the Washington Post, CNN, or even the original New York Times article provide context for the prediction?
- Where's the conjecture as to what might cause such a large increase?
- Who leaked it and did they have an agenda other than to inform?
On the first two questions, high-quality journalists could have and should have dug into the data to compare it to other models, assess the numbers' likelihood considering current conditions, pointed out that the model included in the slides under-counts actual deaths to date. This story did none of those things. The authors also did not consider the third question, even taking the projections as correct, what could cause them? They mention, relaxing the government orders, but did they scrutinize that idea at all by considering which states are relaxing their orders, by what degree, and what would public reaction be? Or did they just rely on their pre-existing pro-quarantine inclinations to conclude relaxation equals "carnage"?
Ask yourself, if the leaked presentation had actually shown an optimistic scenario, where deaths and cases per day plummet, would the authors have asked these questions within the story? Would the follow-up coverage ask them? Would the stories not even be published?
This episode also demonstrates other problems with our current media landscape. First, that the media tend to focus on worst-case scenarios. They emphasize the negative because it gets the most clicks. This is not new. Local news has for decades focused on crime, for example. But now this is occurring on the national level. In addition, in a case like this, it's much easier to be balanced, by questioning the negative projections and also pointing out that this is worse than most other models have projected. The media's incentive to accentuate the negative distorts public perception of reality, even though the media's primary job is to present it accurately.
Another way in which the media coverage leads to a public misperception is when every outlet repeats the original story without providing any additional value. When the 100 left-leaning media outlets see a story that fits with their view of the universe, they repeat it, but with different headlines. This indundates the public with the exact same story, the exact same take on the story, but the perception that these are different stories because they have different headlines. This exaggerates the importance and perceived reality of the story, even though the fact remains that someone in the administration leaked a presentation, one time. When you hear or see, multiple times in the day, different headlines all saying "Deaths are going to go up", you can't read each and every story, so you're not sure if it's based on the same or different information. Not knowing, you split the difference and interpret it, as possibly new, so the story has a larger impact than it should.
This is exactly what happened when BuzzFeed published their story about how the Mueller Report would show that Trump directed his attorney to lie. This also was based on anonymous sources and grew exponentially through media repetition. Like this recent episode, none of the outlets that repeated this "bombshell" provided any additional consideration of the facts but was happy to repeat information that fit their inclinations. Look how that turned out.
Americans deserve a better media industry. As it is constituted, especially in political news, it is geared towards pushing the public in a certain direction instead of strictly informing them and providing context.
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