{"id":452,"date":"2020-08-12T01:34:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T09:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=452"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:39:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T19:39:51","slug":"political-rant-right-wing-media-disinformation-and-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2020\/08\/12\/political-rant-right-wing-media-disinformation-and-the-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"[political rant] Right Wing Media, Disinformation, and the Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t often post political stuff. My readers may remember the series of posts, “In Troubled Times,” as I walked\/crawled\/screamed through my reactions to the unfolding events of the 2016 election. A more current version would be entitled, “In Perilous Times,” and has been on my mind. To get the discussion started, here are some thoughts on how the right-wing media and conspiracy theorists spread disinformation that resulted in a much worse pandemic in the US.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0The New York Times<\/i>\u00a07\/28 morning report:<\/p>\n

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Why is the U.S. enduring a far more severe virus outbreak than any other rich country?<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
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There are multiple causes, but one of them is the size and strength of right-wing media organizations that frequently broadcast falsehoods. The result is confusion among many Americans about scientific facts that are widely accepted, across the political spectrum, in other countries.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
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Canada, Japan and much of Europe have no equivalent to Sinclair \u2014 whose local newscasts reach about 40 percent of Americans \u2014 or Fox News. Germany and France have widely read blogs that promote conspiracy theories. \u201cBut none of them have the reach and the funding of Fox or Sinclair,\u201d Monika Pronczuk, a Times reporter based in Europe, told me.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
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Fox is particularly important, because it has also influenced President Trump\u2019s response to the virus, which has been\u00a0slower and less consistent<\/a>\u00a0than that of many other world leaders. \u201cTrump repeatedly failed to act to tame the spread, even though that would have helped him politically,\u201d\u00a0The Washington Post\u2019s Greg Sargent has written<\/a>. The headline on Sargent\u2019s opinion column is: \u201cHow Fox News may be destroying Trump\u2019s re-election hopes.\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
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Another factor creating confusion: The lack of an aggressive response to virus misinformation from Facebook and YouTube. Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter,\u00a0has identified some of this misinformation<\/a>, and the two companies have responded by removing the posts he cited. But Legum told me he had pointed out only a small fraction of the false information, and the companies had done relatively little to remove it proactively.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
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Twitter took a slightly more aggressive step yesterday,\u00a0putting temporary limits on the account of Donald Trump Jr.<\/a>\u00a0after he shared the false Breitbart video.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t often post political stuff. My readers may remember the series of posts, “In Troubled Times,” as I walked\/crawled\/screamed through my reactions to the unfolding events of the 2016 election. A more current version would be entitled, “In Perilous Times,” and has been on my mind. To get the discussion started, here are some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17],"tags":[90,89,34,88],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-rants","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-disinformation","tag-pandemic","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}