Prognosis: Negative

by Paul Jacob: Ah, the Law of Unintended Consequences!

It doesn’t apply just to government programs. It also applies to journalistic crusades.

What am I talking about?

Well, by now, it is pretty clear that the mask mandates, social distancing efforts, and lockdown policies have not worked very well, if at all. But that hasn’t stopped corporate news media.

From what?

From inducing panic by playing up the negative aspects of the COVID epidemic, and downplaying — even suppressing — information that would mitigate . . . their propagation of panic.

And policies of an extreme nature.

Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason, calls our attention to recent research: “Based on an analysis of news stories about COVID-19 that appeared from January 1 through July 31, Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote and two other researchers found that 91 percent of the coverage by major U.S. media outlets was ‘negative in tone.’ The rate was substantially lower in leading scientific journals (65 percent) and foreign news sources (54 percent).”

It has consequences: “This unrelenting, indiscriminate negativity fosters suspicion and resistance. Journalists and politicians who repeatedly cry wolf should not be surprised at the lack of cooperation when the beast actually appears.”

Which suggests that corporate media’s approach to the disease and our responses to it has had effects quite the opposite of what leftist Yellow Journalists aim: total government control of the populace in the cause of fighting a disease.

By overstating their case, and even flagrantly fibbing, they may be inoculating us from the very disease they promote.

That disease being not COVID, of course, but Therapeutic Totalitarianism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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