There You Have It

Long Covid activist Meighan Stone didn't want to take her mask off. After pressuring her multiple times, an ER nurse called security on her. This public health failure happened at Sibley Hospital in D.C. These incidents are happening on a regular basis now as mask bans and proposals spread from L.A. to New York. You're not going to hear much about it in the news. When you do, it's framed as a problem for the vulnerable, with blue fascists freely associating masks with crime and hate.

None of the handful of stories that discuss these mask bans mention that we're currently in the middle of a deep Covid surge, at a million cases a day. None of them talk about mask bans in the context of Long Covid in adults and children.

A widely cited study declaring "strikingly low" rates of Long Covid in children was recently retracted due to major flaws in methodology. The researchers who pushed for this retraction are heroes and champions of truth.

Is the media covering that?

Not really.

To their credit, Time did recently run a very important piece on Long Covid in children, focusing on a recent study published in JAMA.

Here's the highlight:

They estimated that 20% of the previously infected younger children and 14% of the previously infected adolescents met that threshold [for diagnosis]. Kids infected before the Omicron wave were especially likely to fall into the Long COVID category.

Those numbers are higher than some previous estimates—for example, a recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report concluded that only about 1% of U.S. kids had had Long COVID as of 2022. But other studies have come to similar conclusions, estimating that somewhere between 10% and 20% of kids who catch COVID-19 will develop long-term complications.

Media outlets like USA Today and NBC are also covering this study. For once, major news networks are devoting attention to something that deserves it. Of course, they're doing it after years of running stories blaming children's school performance and developmental delays on smartphones and lockdowns.

Earlier this year, The New York Times published a misleading, biased story on the "long-lasting" harm of school closures. And The Washington Post recently ran a story also blaming absences on everything except Long Covid and immune system damage. Even Education Week has run pieces attributing weak academic performance to school closures and stress, not the virus itself. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Pick a magazine or newspaper and you'll find stories like these, but very few talking about the ongoing harm of exposing children and teenagers to Covid. The ones that do are almost always sitting behind a paywall.

Absence speaks louder than words, and not just about Covid.

In 2022, barely 1 percent of all corporate television focused on climate change. That was, in fact, a record high. A year later, it fell 25 percent. That was 2023, the year we surpassed 1.5C of warming for all practical purposes. It was the hottest year in recorded history, and also the worst year for climate disasters, costing us $600 billion in the U.S. alone. Entire countries shut down because it was too hot for work or school. All that, and the corporate media spent even less time talking about the problem. Meanwhile, one columnist after another published long screeds against doomers and fearmongers, insisting that we still had plenty of time to turn things around.

A compelling piece by Ryan Hagen breaks down the unsettling relationship between western news media and the fossil fuel industry. As he points out, internal reports from companies like Exxon celebrate their campaign to turn liberal news outlets like The New York Times in favor of their own industries, convincing the public they were working hard to shift toward renewable energy when the plan was always to use it like icing on top of a cake made out of coal.

Tireless work by Amy Westervelt has chronicled the impact of these campaigns. As her research shows, climate change has morphed from a topic that 80 percent of the public felt an urgency about to, now, a divisive issue and a point that most people would rather not talk about. On top of that, think tanks like the Atlas Network have made a major push to criminalize peaceful climate protests and turn public opinion against activists. A Yale study found that more than 60 percent of Americans hardly ever hear anything about climate change now.

And if you bring it up...

You're a doomer.

There has been a concerted effort across the internet to paint anyone who actually cares about the future as a deeply unhinged fearmonger. Meanwhile, social media giants like Meta have relentlessly censored information about Long Covid.

Have you noticed?

Nate Bear pulled the curtain back on how the media works roughly a year ago. As he puts it, "A lot of the stories you see in the headlines are the result of a PR agency. And depending on the news, the PR agent might not send out a release en-masse but “sell in” the story as an exclusive to just one outlet... Every day a proportion of all news you read starts at just a handful of these agencies."

PR firms are constantly wooing journalists, creating an atmosphere where conflict of interest is more of a feature than a bug.

Caitlin Johnstone did a thorough breakdown of mass media bias. Perhaps the most egregious example: MSNBC reporter Krystal Ball leveled blunt but accurate criticism of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and correctly predicted that she would lose against Donald Trump because of all her neoliberal baggage. In response, the Clinton campaign threatened the entire network "not to provide any access during the upcoming campaign." The head of the network told Ball that she "could still say what I wanted, but I would have to get any Clinton-related commentary cleared with the president of the network."

So, she couldn't say whatever she wanted.

Right?

Johnstone cites a piece by Jeff Cohen in Salon that also outlines the peer pressure, groupthink, and careerism that dominates the newspapers, magazines, and mainstream news networks in the U.S.

As she further explains:

Journalists either learn how to do the kind of reporting that will advance their careers in the mass media, or they don’t learn and they either remain marginalized and unheard of or they get worn down and quit.

Christopher Hedges, who left The New York Times after a written reprimand for criticizing the Iraq War, has gone on to describe in disturbing detail how the U.S. media caters to the Israeli government, continually overlooking its war crimes. An outspoken critic of U.S. policy, Hedges has endured persecution for speaking the truth, including the cancellation of his news program for defending other writers and real journalists from charges of antisemitism.

Another outspoken critic, Mehdi Hasan, was dropped from MSNBC for speaking out over Palestine. As Sharon Zhang wrote after the decision, "Hasan has been one of the only news anchors on a major broadcast outlet speaking up against Israel's brutality." He was also one of the few news anchors who told the truth about Covid. As Hasan recently made clear in The Guardian, it's imperative for Democrats to take a stronger, pro-humanitarian stance on Gaza and break with Biden's approach, which has sparked outrage and disgust across the left.

Hasan makes a remarkable point in this column, looking to history for cues about how Democrats need to act to ensure history.

It's not vibes.

It's guts.

Nobody really remembers Hubert Humphrey, LBJ's vice president who lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon by about a percentage point. It's a lesson worth talking about. Humphrey was losing badly because he couldn't stand up to his own party, the Democrats, who were actually very, very pro-Vietnam War. He managed to close the gap considerably in the 11th hour of the race, finally standing up to his own party and promising to end the war if he became president. Hasan wonders what would've happened if he had trusted his gut sooner.

Well, history gives us a few clues. After all, Nixon did end the war. In the decades since, the Vietnam War has gone down in history as one the biggest mistakes the U.S. ever made. Psychologists use it as a case study of entrapment in escalating conflicts. It's a touchstone used to rate our other failures.

Time and again, history tells us that doing the right thing actually serves political expedience far more than vibes.

Democrats could ensure a landslide victory if they would just take a clear stance on our biggest threats and challenges. They could be honest about Covid. They could stand up against mask bans. They could stand up against genocide. They could renew their promise to take on climate change.

We're not seeing that.

Instead, we see the same groupthink and indirect censorship that dominates the news media. It's not a surprise, given how entwined they've become.

Look at what's happening to Taylor Lorenz.

Outlets like The Washington Post and NPR, who pride themselves on their devotion to democracy and diversity, have assailed Lorenz for referring to Biden as "a war criminal" in a private social media post.

Here's the worst part of NPR's story:

Lorenz has also courted controversy, online, in print, and in real life. During the peak of the pandemic, and since its ebb, she has inspired mockery from conservatives over her insistence on wearing masks, even outdoors. She has cited autoimmune issues as the reason.

Look at the verbs here. Far from objective, they describe Lorenz as "insisting" on wearing a mask "even outdoors," and then frame her autoimmune issues not as a reality but as a reason, almost an excuse. For the record, multiple studies have shown that Covid spreads outdoors, especially at crowded events.

This is what writers and real journalists deal with as they try to do the right thing. It's disturbing to watch.

Both Jared Yates Sexton and Sarah Kendzior have expressed an ambivalent reluctance to get on board with the vibes as the DNC hosts their national convention. The kindest thing Sexton can say is that "It was a masterful feat of political theater" as organizers clambered to put down pro-Palestinian protests during speeches and tilted cameras away from violence and toward more soothing, therapeutic shots of Tim Walz with his family.

As Kendzior writes, "Today both the Democratic and Republican parties operate on cult logic, which means they sometimes have the same policies, but wrapped in different rhetoric--because cultists will abide anything so long as their leader is the one pushing it. Policies they would protest if they were carried out by the other side are suddenly deemed acceptable when pushed by their own."

The same goes for media coverage.

It's worth pointing out that Kamala Harris no longer supports a ban on fracking. She no longer supports a single-payer healthcare system, otherwise known as "Medicare for all" which would provide healthcare access to everyone. Her stance on border patrol and police funding have all shifted right. The media signs off on it, saying "Progressives said they’re disappointed but still support her as she works out the best strategy to defeat former President Donald Trump — even if it means leaving their cause behind."

But it's not just causes getting left behind.

It's human beings.

Is it simply a desire or a wish that nurses don't call security on us because we want to wear masks at an ER, like Meighan Stone? Do we have to leave our human rights behind so we can ensure our human rights?

Do we have to lay down our lives for vibes?

That's the current groupthink.

So there you have it.

The media doesn't report the truth. They spend about 1 percent of their time on things that actually matter. Politicians cater to an underinformed public, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to nurses calling security on immunocompromised patients for wearing a mask, while newspapers and networks fire real journalists for daring to do their jobs.

It's really something, isn't it?

It doesn't help when readers and viewers complain anytime someone salts their mood with the truth. In an era where free, independent content matters more than ever, it's also harder than ever to come by. How are content creators supposed to tell the truth or talk about things that matter when they're constantly being reprimanded, penalized, and punished every time they try?

We desperately need a free press, and we need a public that supports a free press and not silos of dueling echo chambers.

You get what you support.

It's that simple.

If you appreciate my work, you can support it here or get my book. This publication is grateful for support from readers and organizations like Kanro for funding research and awareness of diseases and other crises.