You Only Die Once
Why have media fear-mongers been so wrong about this pandemic?
by Robert Stacy McCain
May 18, 2020, 12:21 AM
Everyone in the media was horrified last month when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced he would begin reopening the state’s economy. An April 21 headline in The Week denounced Kemp’s reckless “experiment,†and on April 22, MSNBC bemoaned the Republican governor’s “dangerous gamble.†Dana Milbank of the Washington Post declared: “Public health experts fear coronavirus will burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman.†The Atlantic’s Amanda Mull went so far as to call Kemp’s move an “experiment in human sacrifice.†Yet perhaps the most memorable media condemnation of Kemp was from Ron Fournier, former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, who proclaimed on Twitter: “Mark this day. Because two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on his hands. And as Georgians move around the country, they’ll spread more death and economic destruction.â€
Well, everyone did mark the day and, after Fournier’s “two or three weeks†elapsed, they called attention to how badly wrong his prediction had been. “Dear Media, Governor Kemp Will Accept Your Apology Now,†was the headline on Stacey Lennox’s column at PJMedia, in which she pointed out that, contrary to what Kemp’s media critics seemed to assume, the governor “had worked closely with public health officials†in crafting his policy to reopen Georgia’s businesses. Fournier and other media fear-mongers have made such false assumptions many times during the course of this pandemic, but in contrast to Kemp, these journalists don’t risk anything by being wrong. They suffer no consequences for their baseless speculation and incendiary rhetoric. No one in the media has lost their job for libeling Kemp. He’s a Republican, after all, and libeling Republicans is obviously not a firing offense at MSNBC or the Washington Post. It’s their stock in trade.
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https://spectator.org/you-only-die-once/
