The American Media Hits Rock Bottom

When the Obama administration pushed for nuclear rapprochement with the terrorist Iranian regime, our media beclowned itself. In order to bamboozle the American people about the administration’s desired capitulation to the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of jihad, then-deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes created, according to his own admission, a media “echo chamber.” The oh-so-brave guardians of democracy in our fourth estate dutifully obliged their marching orders.

For a while, it seemed this sad display might mark a nadir for journalistic integrity in America. But then the Chinese Communist Party unleashed the lethal coronavirus on an unsuspecting world. And the American media, smug as ever and unnervingly eager to disseminate agitprop for a geopolitical archfoe during this once-a-century pandemic, has reached rock bottom anew.

The ChiComs, in the early stages of the Wuhan virus outbreak, rhetorically downplayed the severity of the threat, peddled outright statistical disinformation to gullible third-party actors, browbeat into submission doctors raising alarm and failed to seal off contaminated areas. One oft-cited British university study concluded that proper early-stage Chinese government intervention might have reduced the virus’s spread by as much as 95%.

Since then, Beijing, along with complicit World Health Organization toadies, has tried to flip that painful truth on its head. China, which rose to the stature of global medical supply behemoth due to decades of unfettered neoliberalism run amok, has since shipped off highly desired medical equipment to desperate foreign nations. Those supplies have oftentimes been woefully defective, but that hasn’t stopped many in the media from fawning over China’s purported humanitarian magnanimity.

An additional pillar of ChiCom chicanery has been to combine statistical disinformation with aggressive promotion of positive news coverage — otherwise known as state-sponsored communist propaganda. And the American media, lustful to peddle any narrative that could counter that of President Donald Trump, has been along for the ride.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. intelligence community confirmed China’s coronavirus caseload and death statistics have been “intentionally incomplete.” Put simply, the intelligence community corroborated what the American people instinctually knew: Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks are loathsome liars.

But that hasn’t stopped large swaths of the mainstream media firmament from haphazardly spouting such statistics nonetheless. “The U.S. Now Leads the World in Confirmed Coronavirus Cases,” a New York Times headline in late March uncritically stated, adding along for good measure a complimentary ode to the “ferocious intensity” of the Chinese Communist Party’s post-outbreak crackdown efforts. Never mind that any quasi-self-aware journalist should have antennae fully raised when reporting statistics from a full-fledged communist police state.

Other leading outlets, even after the intelligence community assessment, have followed the Gray Lady’s sycophantic lead. Earlier this week, NBC News juxtaposed horrific U.S. death tolls with a statement that “meanwhile, in China, where the pandemic broke out, not a single new coronavirus death was reported.” As Senator Ted Cruz quipped, it seems NBC News ought to register as an official Chinese Communist Party lobbyist under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Further examples abound. Earlier this week, ABC News posted a clip about the city of Wuhan lifting previously imposed travel restrictions - except the video appeared to be an uncut propaganda video from China Central Television, a state-owned network. CBS News followed suit, airing segments of the same regime-sculpted propaganda video.

Walter Duranty applauds from the grave.

Not content to merely play the role of lackey for America’s No. 1 geopolitical enemy, the media has further sullied itself during the White House’s daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings. The purpose of these briefings is to transmit pertinent information directly to the American people amidst an unprecedented crisis. But every day, during the briefings, a self-aggrandizing reporter inevitably takes the opportunity afforded by a national spotlight to grandstand and pick a petty fight with the president. These invariable sanctimonious displays are not just silly — in the present environment, they’re reckless, selfish and immoral, to boot.

If past is prologue, an identical situation will unfold the next time America experiences tragic national circumstances the magnitude of the Wuhan virus epidemic. We should all now have the foresight to recognize that when that time comes, the media will be somewhere between useless and outright counterproductive.

The Patriot Post® · The American Media Hits Rock Bottom