If the NY Times says it, it must be true

Thursday, May 14, 2020

New York Times science reporter went off the rails this week. He tried to blame Donald Trump for Coronavirus during a TV interview, forcing Force the New York Times Two recant his statement saying they were his private views.

But in fact his reporting has always had a tinge to it, following the Democratic party line that many of us have been hearing for months.

The way to tell a great lie is to sprinkle it with truth, small items you can point to and say: “See I was right.”

His rant had just enough of the small nuggets to make it seem legitimate when it was not.

What he said reflected what Democrats have been saying all along that Trump had been warned by China as early as January 1st and had done nothing until declaring a state of emergency on March 9th.

This is the typical Democratic Distortion of fact which is why this science reporter’s stories going back now seems so suspicious.

He ignores the fact that the Chinese covered up a lot of what was going on until January and whether or not there were private conversations warning him the official statements coming out of China said differently.

Many of us knew even in January that Chinese New Year was spreading the virus worldwide because Chinese tend to go home for the years and then come back.

This is why San Francisco, New York, Washington State and Italy were hit harder than most other places. And it why so many people are disputing the governor of New York when he calls it a European virus since the virus hit hardest in Italy which has a huge Asian immigrant population supporting  garment industry there.

The other thing this wonderful New York Times science reporter ignored was the fact that Trump attempted to hold these trips from Asia to United States and that he was blocked by Democrats.

 Pelosi even encouraged people to visit Chinatown saying there was nothing to worry about while at the same time her colleagues including another senator from California we're secretly selling off their stocks because they perceived a crash due to the pandemic.

Trump apparently was forced into declaring a state of emergency when other options failed because he did not want the economy to crash while Democrats did.

Trump relied on questionable advice from the director of the CDC which became clear overtime was inconsistent and often wrong and its projections.

The New York Times Reporter rant came at a very suspicious time when people were starting to question the validity of the pandemic and its predictions  and the rant seemed to be a desperate attempt to protect the slanted stories the reporter had been writing all along.

Of course, the usual Believers in the pandemic and Democratic supporters are praising him as an expert who is covered and pandemics in the past.

And that is exactly the problem.

No reporter -- even a specialized one is an expert. We rely on sources and the longer we report on a particular subject the more we narrow these sources down to those who we have faith in, people we believe who know what they're talking about and we go back to them again and again and again for information.  So essentially these experts are the ones who shape the story and create the myth we come to believe.

Even when a reporter is unbiased -- which is rare--  we get slanted stories.  This is part of the problem with man-made climate change reporting in which reporters simply take the word of experts they have relied on over the years and never bother seeking out alternative facts that may be just as legitimate.

This has never been more true than with covid-19.

Part of the problem in this part of the country is that we're at the Epicenter of the disaster and so when we see her large body count we tend to believe the kind of crap this reporter was selling.

People believe what they see for themselves didn't have to rely on media to save what's going on elsewhere.

This unfortunately puts reporters in a unique position of playing God because people have faith in them and will be loyal to them and follow their lead even when it is a Pied Piper lead to some place a particular political group wants them to go to.

Media creates a stage and puts the actors on it, create situations that emphasize the kind of story they want people to believe. We shows video clips and photographs as examples of what we are to believe is happening in the wide world such as all the coffins in Italy or the Chinese government spraying down the street with sanitizer even when this does not reflect the wider reality. Because people see it on TV the internet, they tend to believe it reflects the whole picture.

Media becomes most people's eyes and ears on the world and if presented through a skewed lens people tend to believe lies.

 And since so many people believe this science reporter as an authentic unbiased source, they follow his lead even when it appears that it is supporting a particular political agenda.

 Specialized reporters like this are dangerous for a number of reasons and the longer they specialize in a particular kind of reporting the more dangerous they are.

People tend to see them as all-knowing when they are really just parrot repeating what they are told by particular scientist they have sought out.  Whether reporter is unbiased in most cases his sources are biased and the story becomes slanted.  Still more dangerous is the fact that reporters tend to believe in these scientists and ignore other information that might challenge what they say.

Many times, it is because the sources are official or prominent -- reporters love to get people with a lot of credentials to back their claims even when as time as shown this is a lot of bullshit.

Even when science reporters have secret reservations -- as this one did not -- they dare not challenge the expertise they use in their stories because they will need these same experts for future stories.

The longer a reporter works a specific beat the more likely his stories are going to be shaped by questionable characters who we cannot really check as authentic  and certainly can't get from this reporter both sides of complex issues only spin and manipulation.

Since local government is pumping up the number of dead and we get almost daily reports of friends and neighbors dying we assume that this translates to a national phenomenon when it doesn't.

Local and National media rely on this hysteria to support questionable stories and to support questionable facts.

 This is not to say that there isn't enough blame to go around Trump relied on the wrong people and perhaps put the wrong people in place not anticipating that this could happen  after all there have been pandemics that it killed tens of thousands of people every year for all of my life sometimes as many as a hundred thousand.

But in the past, nobody hijacked the pandemic for political purposes in an election year.

 Now as people start to question the facts that have been presented this New York Times Reporter apparently got desperate and tried to spin it without the usual staging and all he comes off is a petty liar.