Study Shows 87% Of U.S. National Media Covid Coverage Was Negative, Hilariously Wonders Why Media Would Make It Seem So Bad

The New York Times got caught accidentally doing some legitimate reporting. It always astonishes me when it happens, and I’m convinced they aren’t doing it on purpose. But this article and the study on which it reports confirm exactly what we knew about the American news media behavior during the politically-weaponized Covid pandemic.

As I like to say, “Covid is real, but the response is not.”

The New York Times morning newsletter contained an article called “Bad News Bias,” which reports on a study by a Dartmouth College professor, Bruce Sacerdote, about news media Covid-19 reporting. Ultimately, the study determined,

“The U.S. media is offering a different picture of Covid-19 from science journals or the international media.”

Apparently, the professor was partial to CNN and PBS news coverage, and he noticed that really all the coverage he was seeing was negative, even when he knew there were positive things that could have been reported, like case number improvements, vaccine developments, etc.

“When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. And when vaccine research began showing positive results, the coverage downplayed it.”

So he coordinated with some fellow researchers and determined to build a database of Covid-19 coverage from every major news network in the U.S. and overseas, including CNN, Fox News,  Politico, The New York Times, and “hundreds of other sources.” The Covid coverage from those sources was then analyzed for positive, neutral, or negative language and tone.

The results of the analysis showed something that really any objective American already knew, but that mainstream news media would rather you didn’t realize.

“The coverage by U.S. publications with a national audience has been much more negative than coverage by any other source that the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications and regional U.S. media.”

According to study co-author Molly Cook,

“The most well-read U.S. media are outliers in terms of their negativity.”

Another co-author, Ranjan Sehgal, said,

“The media is painting a picture that is a little bit different from what the scientists are saying.”

Specific numbers showed that 51% of international media and 53% of U.S. local media  were negative, compared to 87% of national U.S. media being negative.

So if you were watching or reading a national U.S. news source, almost 9 out of every 10 of the stories you saw were skewed to be particularly negative.

Professer Sacerdote specifically explained that there didn’t appear to be any knowingly false reporting by these negative national news outlets, but that it was more an issue of which facts they chose to emphasize and which facts were de-emphasized, or the manner in which they reported the facts. And we know this to be true of all mainstream national news coverage, not just regarding Covid. They are very good at carefully reporting only certain facts or carefully framing certain facts that will support their desired narrative.

The New York Times reporter then shockingly admits the truth, saying,

“If we’re constantly telling a negative story, we are not giving our audience the most accurate portrait of reality. We are shading it.”

Yes, NYT reporter, you are shading it. You are constantly shading reality to make sure the facts tell the story that you want them to tell. The story that is most advantageous to your desired narrative. I’m honestly shocked that you publicly admitted it. And the worst part is that while you may realize that you’re shading the portrait of reality, there are many Americans who still truly believe that mainstream news media outlets are giving a balanced, objective, un-shaded portrait of reality. So they take that shaded portrait of reality and don’t even realize that they have been carefully mislead. They don’t even know there is other information out there that would give them a fuller and more accurate picture.

I pretty much agree with most of what the New York Times reporter and the researchers are saying in the article. Yes, it’s obvious that news coverage of Covid-19 was skewed to be particularly negative. Some of us who recognized it in real time called it “Covid fearporn.”

But then the NYT reporter explains that the researchers “say they are not sure what explains their findings.” They posit that maybe the media was just telling the people what they wanted to hear, and that the people preferred reading the negative stories.

Well, I’ll clue you in to some pretty major things that certainly explain their findings.

It was an election year. And in an election year, everything is about “the narrative.” And which political narrative does the U.S. mainstream national news media generally tend to support? The leftist narrative. The liberal-leaning, liberal-policy-promoting, liberal-politician-electing narrative.

So if the narrative is what matters in an election year, and the national news media controls the narrative in the country, which Covid narrative do you think would they push?

They’ll push the narrative with which they agree, and which furthers the goals and ideals they support. And in this case, the narrative that mattered was Covid fear and panic. The narrative that mattered was catastrophic disruption of American life and systems. A “new normal” that would require massive changes to the American way of life. Make people as scared as possible and thus more willing to accept these changes.

By perpetuating and worsening fear of Covid through consistently negative reporting, the American people were more willing to give up some liberties in the face of what the mainstream news media was telling them was a catastrophic crisis. And surrendering liberties in the face of crisis is a distinctly leftist ideal. American people were more willing to subject themselves to stricter government rules and control that ultimately negatively impacted the economy and overall American systems, which is also a distinctly leftist ideal.

And the resulting economic and social chaos, in turn, reflected poorly on Donald Trump, which worked to the great advantage of left-leaning politicians and social goals.

If people had truly understood the reality of Covid, unshaded by the desired narrative of the mainstream news media, what might have been different about the overall Covid response and the resulting changes to America? Liberal and far-left ideals and politicians have benefited greatly from the fear perpetuated, and arguably created, by the U.S. mainstream news media. And the media is just fine with that because those are the ideals and politicians the mainstream news media figures support anyway.

But who decided that the distinctly left-leaning mainstream U.S. news media was allowed to shape reality and the future of American life through their shaded Covid reporting?