As the coronavirus pandemic has worsened, CNN has emphasized bleak outcomes, Trump hatefests, and venomous, tiresome Fox News-bashing as the cornerstones of their coverage instead of first informing viewers and providing hope.
Whether it’s Jim Acosta, Jeremy Diamond, Jake Tapper, or liberal media janitors Oliver Darcy and Brian Stelter, the Zucker machine has been firing on all cylinders with a narrative that President Trump was to blame for the deadly pandemic’s spread and broadly painting “right-wing media” and “right-wing web” as virus truthers.
However, one thing that these charlatans had shied away from was their own culpability, such as downplaying the virus, barely covering it (in favor of impeachment), and even holding its March 5 upfront event (dubbed the CNN Experience) with hundreds in attendance, plus an overflow room.
Instead of taking precautions and following competitors like Comcast (parent company of NBC News) and Fox News in canceling their upfronts, CNN parent company WarnerMedia went ahead with its flashy Hudson Yards confab.
Adweek boasted in a 695-word piece that CNN “had no problem convincing buyers to make the trek to Manhattan’s west side: The 250-seat theater was filled to capacity, with some attendees relegated to an overflow room.” It quoted WarnerMedia EVP of sales and marketing Joe Hogan as having bragged that they “put our customers’ needs at the center of everything they do.”
But wait, it gets better. Dr. Sanjay Gupta boasted that CNN would “provide the context for people becomes important” while AC360’s Anderson Cooper lamented that “[t]here’s never been a more important time to be in the business we’re in. … The truth is under assault.”
Hold on! There’s even more! The New York Times wrote this about CNN in a March 17 article about the virus’s effect on television (click “expand”):
The chaotic events of recent days suggest the futility of predicting what will happen next as the virus creeps into previously unaffected areas. A CNN presentation for advertisers held on March 5 — less than two weeks ago — seems almost quaint in retrospect.
It took place at the network’s new headquarters in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards complex. The room was so packed that some advertisers had to be seated in an overflow area.
In front of the crowd — after the anchor Anderson Cooper quipped that he had “shaken, like, 50 hands today” — the CNN president Jeff Zucker asked the network’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, if it was “OK for these folks to go to a room of about 250 people.”
“No,” Mr. Gupta answered half seriously, to laughs from the crowd.
That same day, the coronavirus had infected 200 Americans, killed 12, and news outlets like The Washington Post warned on its front page “Care gaps emerging as virus spreads” (with an online headline of “U.S. health system is showing why it’s not ready for a coronavirus pandemic”). Over at The New York Times, their print edition had over two dozen stories about the virus (including three on the front page).
In the weeks since, Gupta has been singing a different tune. During one of CNN’s ego trips, interrupting April 1’s White House briefing, Gupta lectured how there was a “slowness to react initially” considering the “concern” that level of contagiousness. He continued (click “expand”):
I mean, that is what people are now anticipating, as you as you well know, Wolf, I mean, maybe in some hotspots more than others. But if you look at several places around the country, the curve of cases, a curve of infections is in some ways mirroring those hotspots, maybe earlier in the curve, but still mirroring that.
So I think Italy is a maybe an example, a cautionary example of what could come here. I do think that these stay-at-home orders will make a difference. The question is going to be how big a difference and did they come to soon enough in some of these places? Obviously, I think what 80 percent, 90 percent of the country now is under stay at home sort of recommendations.
We all affect each other, Wolf. So places, you know, if there's cities, big cities within states that don't have stay-at-home orders, then even those cities are still going to be affected because the surrounding areas are not complying yet. So I worry about Italy. I am glad we're doing some of the things we're doing. I just worry if the timing has been too late here or not early enough, at least.
Hindsight is 20/20….unless you’re CNN or a liberal government official at the local or state level. In that case, you’ll escape CNN’s microscope.
Returning to the present, Tapper delivered an emotionally-driven commentary Sunday wondering whether the federal government has a plan of any kind to do anything about the virus.
Hours later, on Reliable Sources, Darcy childishly (and dangerously) suggested Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott doesn’t “care about…misinformation.” In a video tweet of his comments, he ghoulishly wondered if she cares about the lives of FNC viewers.
Sorry, conservative media Benedict Arnold. Perhaps you should ask your boss and network about whether they put fame and profits over lives last month. As for Scott, she had the wherewithal to cancel Fox's upfront, showing concern for both the network staff and the general public. She underscored these concerns in an March 12 memo co-authored with president and executive editor Jay Wallace.
Sadly, the answer would be no. Instead, they’ll continue their Fox News hatefests, doing everything in their slimy power to destroy news outlets that don’t operate based on a juvenile model of eagerly drawing attention to itself, ignoring their own ethical problems and scandals (big and small), and peddling snarky chyrons.
