In March 2021, a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, the New York Times shared the results of a comprehensive survey of 35,000 Americans done by Gallup and Franklin Templeton. True to form, the Times refused to face the survey’s epic implications.
The Times started pulling punches in the headline, “Covid’s Partisan Errors: Republicans tend to underestimate Covid risks — and Democrats tend to exaggerate them.” This equivocation papered over the real news hook of the story, namely that health officials and their media enablers scared policy makers, especially in blue states, into making catastrophic, fear-based misjudgments.
“To many liberals, Covid has become another example of the modern Republican Party’s hostility to facts and evidence,” wrote reporter David Leonhardt, unaware that he just delivered a laugh line. In assessing the GOP worldview, Leonhardt, like most of his media colleagues, saw hostility in just about every Republican gesture.
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