Thread by @JewhadiTM

The latest news cycle over President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis illustrates yet again how destructive the U.S. corporate media are to national unity and a clear understanding of reality
thefederalist.com/2020/10/05/cor…

“...Panic is never helpful. Panic impedes sensible responses to danger. Panic makes things worse, not better. Yet it is predictably what our nation’s media served up, along with a steaming side of wild conspiracy theories.

.@gabrielsherman is a Vanity Fair writer and former New York Magazine writer who is working on a book about New York City’s experience with COVID-19. Notice how many retweets these got.

Sherman’s article linked to in hid tweet falsely reports that Trump’s physician “told reporters that Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday—a day earlier than Trump previously disclosed.”

Instead of asking an easy follow-up question to clarify the physician’s timeline for Trump’s diagnosis, reporters ran with false claims that the president had been diagnosed a day earlier than previously disclosed.

This in turn caused them to inaccurately assert (make up) he had attended a donor event while knowingly COVID-positive.

Sherman also engages in the coy journalism trick of spreading gossip and innuendo while pretending to discount it.

I guess it’s okay to spread conspiracy theories and hysterical quotes so long as you work at Vanity Fair and not InfoWars, and include the appropriate amount of wink-wink, nudge-nudge hedging in your copy.

.@juliettekayyem didn’t even do that. She is a ‘national security analyst’ for — what else — CNN. Here she is on Twitter making yet another ridiculous, completely unsubstantiated Russian collusion claim. Again, note the retweet numbers.

Twitter even participated in the conspiratorial hysteria Sunday by trending the hashtag #Staged, which appears to have been started by @jonostrower.

All this from the same crowd that loves to hate-report on QAnon and uses it as a smear against Trump and his supporters.

This hysteria was not limited to its usual breeding ground, Twitter. Major media published articles and TV segments full of wild conjecture.

One prominent example of this was numerous outlets elevating an off-record suggestion the president’s health has been worse than his doctors have said on the record.

The story became an opportunity to fabricate or deepen divisions among Trump’s personnel rather than focus on much more important issues that matter to Americans at large —

— such as presenting an accurate report about the president’s condition and his prospects for recovery or updating Americans on what kinds of treatments he is using or considering and their medical efficacy according to scientists.

Even if the president is doing worse than he and his medical team are letting on, putting a stiff upper lip on it is the only prudent course of action to protect the country from instability and foreign aggression during a time of perceived weakness.

Facing danger resolutely is also simply the right thing to do.

When each of us must face death, either from COVID-19 or anything else in this dangerous world, which is the more honorable way to do it: As President Trump is, or as Joe Biden is?

Anyone with a sound moral compass knows the answer.

The Venn diagram of overlap between people with sound moral compasses and the American press is unfortunately pretty slim.

Trump’s diagnosis, National Journal’s @HotlineJosh (and many other media figures) claimed, is “a real-life example of the consequences of [Trump] shamelessly flouting the best medical and public-health guidance from his own government.”

The left loudly claims to be against blaming the victim, but as we all know by now, all their supposed principles are subject to incineration before being applied to President Trump.

Kraushaar engaged in more victim-shaming in a weird closer that seemed to morally equate accidentally contracting a highly contagious illness with deliberately betraying one’s spouse:

“Sen. Thom Tillis tested positive for coronavirus on Friday and Democratic opponent Cal Cunningham admitted to an extramarital affair later the same day. Pick your poison in November.”

Viruses aren’t political. They don’t infect only Republicans. They don’t infest anti-mask rallies and avoid Black Lives Matter rallies. They can even infect people who religiously wear masks and wash their hands constantly. Just ask health care workers.

President Trump knew the risks of staying in public, and he chose to face those risks along with the American people he leads, rather than hiding masked in the White House basement.

There is something to be said for a leader getting in the trenches with his troops during a war despite the risks to his safety. It could even be called courage.

To many in our press, however, courage is only for fools.

This attitude is precisely the opposite of every historic moral framework. Every serious moral philosophy teaches people how to suffer rather than how to avoid suffering at all costs.”