Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

You know I have a strong distaste for "the media" as a scapegoat or measure of anything. "The media" is not a hive mind with a common agenda. It involves millions of people publishing information both formally and informally through thousands of channels.

That said, I would challenge the idea that the risk is simply not being covered. It was carried a number of times in the last week on NBC's nightly newscast, and there was a headlining story in the NYT about it this week as well.

Okay, fair enough. Let me focus my energies against CNN. I can't find anything on there stating that protesters are creating the risk of a major COVID-19 spread. Don't you think that if they truly cared about these communities and these individuals, or anyone who is at risk of contracting the virus, they'd publish an article about the risk of spread stemming from protests like these?

I don't think that all members of the media deserve to be scapegoats, but I think that much of the criticism of governing bodies, people who bent the rules, etc., over COVID-19 has lost so much merit lately. What's going on right now is the same stuff that a lot of people used to criticize just a couple of weeks ago with the only difference being that this cause has substantial merit.

I've edited this post and the previous one multiple times to dial back emotion, and I'm not saying a lot of things I want to say, but right now, I'm having to overcome an exceptional amount of frustration over this. I'm sad that we as a nation didn't fix race issues when we should have, but I'm also sad that major media outlets who were supposedly on the side of health and safety aren't pushing that as hard as they were just a few weeks ago.

CNN is definitely not the last bastion of bona fide journalism. 😁 And your edits are fine.

Generally, there are constraints with how much news you can report, whether it be pages or people-hours. So you rank things as newsworthy, which is highly subjective, and no two people doing editorial work will do it the same way. On the question of caring about communities and individuals, that's not really what news organizations do. The press certainly plays a role in protecting people, but its first job is to inform.

How about informing of the dangers/risks of gathering in large groups (for any reason)?

True that CNN isn't the last bastion of bona fide journalism, but given their reach, I expect them to perform to a higher standard. They have too much influence to get sloppy.

As far as constraints on how much they, or any journalistic entity can report, of course I understand that. However, having headlines on things like who is leading in the polls or multiple opinion pieces, it really downplays the significance of what isn't getting covered, and if we're to believe everything we were told in the headlines even just a few weeks ago, mass gatherings like these protests are exactly what we should be avoiding. It just seems to me like that should be a very clear number two in terms of page or TV space. I've no problem with the quest to end racism being item #1, but you can only talk about the same topic for so long before it becomes apparent that you're pushing an agenda, and I think that cutting one headline on so-and-so's reaction to the protests or the situation to free up time or space for reporting on the COVID-19 risks these protests should, by all accounts, present is a worthy adjustment. The current approach just seems to be a blow to journalistic integrity, and it's potentially increasing risk.

The agenda of tv news is to maximize views. They need to capture the biggest audience possible for revenue purposes. In the end it is the dollar that speaks loudest.

If I continue to talk about the virus, that is old news, everyone has heard it. But if I can generate drama about race relations that makes for far more interesting content and thus drives return viewership.

I don't entirely agree that ratings are the biggest driver for TV news. For cable news, maybe, because it's all they do, but the big three orgs don't need to rely on ratings.

The problem with cable news, is that the time they spend reporting news is pretty small compared to the time dedicated to talking heads. The latter just panders to people, which sounds like a problem with the network, but honestly it's a problem with the people. I don't think it's chicken-egg at all. We get the "news" we deserve. All that said, the marketplace for news is fairly large, and there are big players like the NYT or frankly any of the hour-long network nightly newscasts that are good enough to great.

I don't agree that repetition is automatically equated with an agenda. Let's be real, in the Trump era, the average outrage barely lasts 24 hours.

My college journalism training, which is not "real world" by any stretch, suggests that on the scale of newsworthiness, the demonstration-COVID risk is an important sidebar. But then, in the last hour, NYT published this piece about rises in infection rates out west and the south. It's still out there. We haven't seen civil unrest at this scale in decades, that's going to compete with the pandemic.

We haven’t seen outrage like this in decades, sure, but we hear the president say nonsense on a daily basis and news outlets like CNN won’t miss a single opportunity to comment on that with five talking heads for every dumb one-liner. That’s a big source of my frustration. The commentary on the latest Twitter post can’t be more important than pointing out the health risks we were all told for weeks that these protests should present.

To be clear, I do understand that how the president acts has lots of tie-in with these protests, but my point is that there’s more than enough room to be found to cover the COVID-19 risks. Failure to do so either opens up a lot of people to health issues, or it ends up giving the people who think the shutdowns were/are a farce a mountain of support for the validity of their position.

If the government, president, and police are the source of the friction, why are these morons looting and pillaging local businesses. Sounds to me like they should concentrate their efforts on government entities.

Unless they are just looking for an excuse to score some free merchandise, then by all means loot the businesses.

The assumption that people looting are the same people who are protesting seems dubious. There are always people who will use an event like this as an opportunity. (And event like this could mean hurricane, power outage, whatever.)

My question is, why are the police sending hundreds of officers in riot gear to confront people armed with magic markers and cardboard, rather than attempting to protect shopping districts?

sirloindude said:

We haven’t seen outrage like this in decades, sure, but we hear the president say nonsense on a daily basis and news outlets like CNN won’t miss a single opportunity to comment on that with five talking heads for every dumb one-liner. That’s a big source of my frustration.

I'm totally with you there. The latest dumbass thing he says is not newsworthy. It's a new thing literally every day. It was totally stupid that some of them were carrying the daily press conferences live, because nothing important came out of them.

Counterpoint: When the nation is in crisis, what the president says is news. I'm sure whatever GWB said in his first press conference after 9/11 made every front page across the country. I'm sure Obama's speech after Bin Laden was killed also made every front page. The news isn't so much that Trump continues to be an idiot who can barely string two coherent thoughts together. The news is that during this time of crisis, the leader who should be unifying, reassuring, and comforting is instead instigating, baiting, and threatening and/or is completely unaware of how his actions affect people. That he hasn't changed isn't surprising at all, but that it is now playing out when the country most desperately needs him to be not-him isn't just piling on or beating a dead horse.

It'd be more newsworthy if it wasn't so predictable, and if there wasn't so much commentary on it. We don't need all the articles on people's reactions to the dumb comments. How are they any different than they've been the last few years?

It just seems silly, or hypocritical, to me that people still going to church or getting together in suburbia just a few weeks ago were getting called COVIDiots, but nobody says boo about the throngs of people crowded together in the streets where the epidemic was at its worst. Mind you, I'm not advocating criticism of these protesters, but rather saying that if gathering at church is such a health risk, shouldn't this be even more so?

And that goes back to some of my social media acquaintances absolutely putting anyone to shame who dared go out to eat when the restaurants opened or to visit a few friends or to suggest returning to the office with a "how dare you" attitude combined with charts and graphs and statistics. That same handful of individuals is now telling me that if I've ever supported the police or if I'm not littering my social media feed with reposts and demanding people to sign useless online petitions that I don't care at all. And they all went downtown this week to gather and protest - one at least sans mask.

sirloindude said:

Mind you, I'm not advocating criticism of these protesters, but rather saying that if gathering at church is such a health risk, shouldn't this be even more so?

Since it's outside, no, not really, but it seems a little strange to compare the relative inconvenience of not going to church to the anguish of your life being at risk for the color of your skin, after two centuries of this. The danger might be real, but what's at stake is not the same. Let's not lump "Karens" in with Black Lives Matter as moral equivalents.

I’m not trying to suggest that experiencing church remotely is anywhere near the inconvenience (an argument could easily be made that it’s more convenient since you don’t have to leave your home) of being victimized by systemic racism. What I am saying, though, is that it was almost celebrated when someone who dared defy the shutdown got Coronavirus, but now that there’s a cause we can all get behind, it seems like we’re just supposed to pretend that there’s no Coronavirus risk there.

Simply put, the cause for the gathering has no bearing on the behavior of the virus, so if no one is going to acknowledge the severe health risk these protests should conceivably present, then it’s time to bring back baseball, Cedar Point, and all your favorite activities, and do so at full capacity. You just said that since it’s outside, then no, it’s not the same risk, but then neither is going to a park or a sporting event in an outdoor stadium. What’s happening right now is essential to the moral growth of our country, but it’s inadvertently making a farce out of social distancing.

Who is telling you to pretend there's no risk?

Any individual or entity who is staying silent on the matter but who devoted all sorts of coverage or commentary to the risks of gathering in large groups, and/or mocking/criticizing those who gathered after the shutdown orders got implemented. I realize that we're in somewhat of a different environment now with restrictions getting lifted, but there was also all that coverage of experts claiming that states were rushing things and risking exacerbating the pandemic by lifting said restrictions. Shouldn't Dr. Fauci be losing his mind over this, and shouldn't we be hearing about it?

From my perspective, the correct approach here would be for media outlets and vocal individuals to highlight methods of combating racism that comply with social distancing efforts. Failure to do so is, for one reason or another, exceptionally neglectful, and it's a blatant double standard despite the importance of ending racism.

sirloindude said:

Shouldn't Dr. Fauci be losing his mind over this, and shouldn't we be hearing about it?

I agree with everything you said, but what I loved about my boy Tony is that no matter how dire, he never once lost his mind. He's always been a voice of calm reason and his interview from earlier on in this situation with Trevor Noah was one of the most fact based pieces I've seen to date on the subject. And it was mixed with a calming influence and even a bit of humor.

But without getting into it, I do agree that if it's "ok" to accept the risk of these protests, it's just as ok to accept the risk of other group activities.

Double standard is exactly what comes to mind here.

Let's pause for a moment though, the recent protesting has been due to race. However, have we examined the possibility that this cop could have possibly just been over aggressive with everyone, and this is simply a case of police brutality.

What if he was a black cop, would the media cover the story as effectively? A cop killing a civilian is terrible, but a white cop killing a black civilian sounds so much better from a media perspective.

Anyway, the protestors should all be wearing masks, they should all remain 6 feet apart at all times, this is what was drilled into our heads for the past couple months. There were people adamant about restrictions being lifted too early. The protestors are not following social distancing and they get a free pass, so as was said above, if the media isn't having a field day over this lack of social distancing that they were having throughout the past couple months, then what has changed? If the media cried out against the protesting in the name of the virus, would they then be labeled racist?

Everyone is very quick to throw race into the mix, and this just furthers the divide between the population. I don't doubt there are pockets of racism still in existence. But I often wonder if defaulting to racism in cases of different race just exacerbates the issue instead of helping to solve it.