President Trump has recently shifted from ignoring, denying, and calling the coronavirus a Democratic plot to admitting that there is a problem. (But it's not his fault!) This quick video summarizes this change:
This is a great reminder of how Trump lied about and ignored a clear and present danger to his fellow Americans: pic.twitter.com/ZEMm0OkMoe
— Shomik Dutta (@shomikdutta) March 17, 2020
And earlier today at his press briefing, Trump denied that there had been any change:
“No, I’ve always viewed it as very serious,” he retorted. “There was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar, but some people said it wasn’t.”
As a result of Trump's turnaround, his media supporters have needed to adapt. The biggest shift, not surprisingly, has come at Fox News. The Washington Post has written about it and put together an excellent short video to document this change:
Fox’s coronavirus coverage was a low point in the network’s shameful history. The network should never live it down. https://t.co/XZmSas1Xje pic.twitter.com/jsimkCW4k9
— Media Matters (@mmfa) March 18, 2020
While we could call Fox the Trump TV channel, journalism professor Jay Rosen argues that Fox's actions go beyond the simple act of always supporting Trump:
Inevitable, in a way. The Fox News formula includes reflexive support for Trump vs. his opponents, yes, but an even more foundational element is fear— the practice of scaring the audience so as to keep them in a state of pop-eyed fascination mixed with dread. https://t.co/7QiJaB4O3T
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 17, 2020
New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, argues that it's not just Fox that has adapted:
Not just Fox. I've seen an instant shift in my incoming from "cvirus is a liberal hoax" to "how dare you criticize the president in a national emergency". Millions of Americans are already living in "1984" https://t.co/fPA4eYkKJa
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 17, 2020
A note on our local Ogden papers
In reviewing Ogden's coverage of the virus, I found that for the most part (excepting an occasional syndicated column or political cartoon), our local papers did not editorially go to the same lengths to deny the impact of the virus that Fox did. Recently, however, they've come to Trump's defense. See, for instance, Mike Myer's Sunday column (I wrote about it here) in which he argues that we shouldn't blame Trump for the country's lack of preparation. Today's Intelligencer editorial follows this with the "who-could-have-predicted-it" defense:
The bottom line is that predicting pandemics such as COVID-19 is impossible. Reaction is the order of the day, and no nation on earth is better equipped than ours to do that.
Yeah, equipped is one thing and prepared is quite another. Until two weeks ago, the Trump administration had done very little to prepare and now they're struggling to catch-up.
