In an effort to blame everyone but China for the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis, the New York Times has been on the warpath in recent weeks against the Trump administration, Fox News, and conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
The paper published a piece on April 1st with the headline “Alarm, Denial, Blame: The Pro-Trump Media’s Coronavirus Distortion” and detailed the supposed four steps the “pro-Trump media” had taken to allegedly downplay the outbreak. They were listed as follows:
Step 1: Blame China:
In January and early February, when the virus ravaged China and doubts grew about how forthcoming Chinese officials were being, some pundits on the right warned that the country couldn’t be trusted to contain the outbreak or share accurate information about where it originated.
Step 2: Play down the risks:
On Feb. 27, Mr. Hannity opened his show in a rage. “The apocalypse is imminent and you’re going to all die, all of you in the next 48 hours. And it’s all President Trump’s fault,” he said, adding, “Or at least that’s what the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think.” His program would be one of many platforms with large audiences of conservatives — 5.6 million people watched Mr. Hannity interview the president on Fox last week — to misleadingly highlight statistics on deaths from the seasonal flu as a comparison.
Step 3: Share ‘survivor’ stories:
On March 13th, “Fox & Friends” ran a segment featuring a 65-year-old woman who said she caught the virus and barely had any symptoms. During the interview, the host Steve Doocy asked about the “absolute panic” and noted the concern about older people in particular. “Well look at that,” he said to the woman. “But you are over 60, and it doesn’t seem to have been a big deal to you, right?” Mr. Doocy said.
Step 4: Blame the left
By the middle of March, the story of the virus on the right was one of how Mr. Trump’s enemies had weaponized “the flu” and preyed on the insecurities of an emasculated America.Mr. Limbaugh blamed “wimp politics — which is liberalism.” [Breitbart’s Joel] Pollak, whose tone grew more serious, said the virus had spread while Democrats stretched out the president’s impeachment. “We now know the cost of impeachment,” he wrote.
Carlson fired back, accusing the New York Times of being guilty of what were accusing “pro-Trump media” outlets of doing.
After noting the mainstream media had been screwing up in their reporting on the Wuhan coronavirus from the start, he then began to outline what he called the “four steps to understanding their coverage.”
Step 1, Carlson said, was to blame racism:
Here are two New York Times headlines from the early days of the outbreak: “An outbreak of racist sentiment as coronavirus reaches Australia.” In other words, people’s bad opinions are worse than a pandemic.Here’s another. “In Europe, fear spreads faster than the coronavirus itself.” Okay.
Step 2, he noted, was for the New York Times to play down the risks:
On January 29th, the paper warns you to, “Beware the pandemic panic.” Calm down, ladies and gentlemen.A week later, they asked, “Who says it’s not safe to travel to China?” Book a ticket to Wuhan, racist.
When their denialism and racism tactics didn’t work to contain the Wuhan Coronavirus, Carlson stated the New York Times moved on to Step 3, which was to politicize the crisis:
Calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” or the “Wuhan virus” is bigotry, the paper will tell you. But they had no problem on February 26th publishing an op-ed saying, “Let’s call it Trump virus.”And then last week, in a shameful moment that will live forever in infamy, the paper declared — and I’m quoting, “The road to coronavirus hell was paved by evangelicals.”Yes, that’s right. A pandemic that emerged from the atheist country is really the fault of Christians, says The New York Times. That tells you a lot about where they are.
After that, Carlson pointed out that the paper had started blaming Fox News, which he said was Step 4:
Last week, they warned about “Fox’s fake news contagion.” Then there was Wednesday’s article. Talk about a lie. This show is telling you about the dangers of this disease way back in January, when “The Times” was still wondering if it was racist to even know it existed and encouraging you to travel to Wuhan on vacation.Now, we’re highlighting the continued dishonesty and malevolence of China. Meanwhile, The New York Times and their star reporter, Donald McNeil, is going over to MSNBC to deliver unpaid infomercials for the Chinese Communist Party.
At that point, Carlson played a clip of McNeil on MSNBC really talking up how China handled the crisis, claiming there was “no more virus in Wuhan,” and suggesting the U.S. hire some of China’s doctors to help the ones here.
Carlson went on to quip about how McNeil’s higher ups at the New York Times had to be worrying about how he was “giving away the truth” about their biased coverage.
Watch the full segment below:
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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