Media Targets Essential Industries for Virus Blame

Once upon a time in the United States of America, the free press, whose rights are guaranteed in the nation's Constitution, were an honest and powerful force for good. In 2020, with hundreds of competing networks fighting to fill up a 24-hour news cycle and to be noticed by the public, media went from being the nation's gatekeepers to its gate-smashers. Media, in many respects, act as vandals. Their latest target, according to NPR, CNN and other organizations, is that Donald Trump not overriding state authority in Washington to close down farms through presidential decree is the reason people got sick and died.

One wishes there was a day where the news was good and not simply another example of something going wrong in America. It would certainly be nice. Though according to media's latest narrative, elderly Hispanic people in Washington state, right outside of Seattle, were somehow forced to work on cherry and apple farms, because the President of the entire nation, who resides on the other side of the country, did not personally shut these farms down. So the stories being pushed are anecdotal examples of senior citizens, who happen to be Hispanic, who contracted the virus and perished. The point media attempts to make here is that if only Donald Trump went against his Constitutional powers to force all of Washington state to shut down its food farms, more people would have lived.

Jobs are what make America's economy operate, though media would have us believe that jobs are not a requirement. Perhaps the economy runs off some magic miasma in the air, not people's labor.

Perhaps some people reading news stories like this agree that more action should have been taken. Some may think it's ridiculous for media to act this antagonistically for no reason. Though no matter where one falls here, the objective reality is that media had two months prior to the entire nation being affected by the pandemic to warn the public about what was coming out of Wuhan, and what did they do? They ran 24-7 opinion coverage on the impeachment hearings, completely ignoring the virus. Now, it seems, they are pushing a new story every day suggesting every person to die from Covid-19 is the fault of America not being a monarchy where the king decrees and the land abides.

What is the Right Answer?

The truth of the matter is that no one knows the right things to do. In 2009, America got hit the H1N1 virus, that originated in Mexico, and President Barack Obama never even considered closing down the borders or closing down the economy. As a result, sixty-one million Americans contracted H1N1, and 13,000 died, with thousands of small children dying from the virus. You can count the number of negative media stories ran about Obama on one finger. Luckily for all Americans, H1N1 was not as severe as Covid-19, but no one knew that for sure until the aftermath. Even still, no one clamored for the economy to be shut down, and no one tried to blame America's President for the pandemic. It was something Americans faced together as a nation and moved past.

This time, things are not working even remotely the same. Our borders were closed. Travel was suspended. And the bulk of our entire economy was shut down. Still, however, a media that was entirely silent eleven years ago has gone out of its way to speak up now, mostly blaming President Trump for his inaction and pointing their fingers at hard-working Americans trying to feed their families as some inherent evil that should have been stopped from on-high.

What has changed from then to now? Twitter and Facebook were around. Sides were still polarized. The only difference, it seems, is that media wanted Obama in the White House, while they want Trump gone. Is this the right way to view the difference? No one can be sure. The only thing of which we are sure is that there is a monumental difference in how media are acting now. To suggest that people should have been driven out of every industry, millions losing their homes and going hungry, in order to keep a few people from getting the virus, is a brutally antagonistic story line that media have been pushing for three months now.

No one knows the answers to these sweeping pandemics. The issue here is that media does pretend to know. They look back in hindsight and churn out piece after piece about how an American President cost the lives of farmers in Washington.

The real shame of it is that once the Covid-19 virus does pass us, America will still have a larger virus that's not going away.