The Media’s Coronavirus Failures
By Jim Geraghty
May 5, 2020 6:30 AM
If the current crisis has taught us anything, it’s that mainstream outlets still struggle with giving audiences what they need in addition to what they want.
Los Angeles, a sci-fi action flick released in 2011, depicted what would happen if the U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton had to respond to a sudden alien invasion. Though the film wasn’t terribly original, it was fun. (A diverse band of Marines and civilians, led by Aaron Eckhart and his perfect chin, fleeing and fighting their way through a hastily evacuated Los Angeles while dodging alien drones, could hardly not be fun.) And there was one sly bit of social commentary tucked in: On the news channels shown throughout the movie, the stock tickers kept running at the bottom of the screen, showing that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down roughly 4,847 points in response to the fact that aliens were taking over the world’s coastal cities. Bad news for humanity, and think of the toll on your 401(k)!
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-media-failures/#slide-1
