We’ve written a lot here about how Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has carefully balanced Constitutional liberty with public health concerns in her approach to managing the Wuhan virus pandemic in South Dakota.
Her view of how things should be handled in her state has been very much at odds with how “lockdown” types in the media/on the left prefer that governors manage their states. Understandably, she’s also been her state’s fiercest defender when it comes to attacks on it — and her, whether they be from the MSM or liberal commentators.
It should be noted that the same “journalists” who have routinely ridiculed/mocked Noem’s handling of the crisis have, on the other hand, showered New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo with praise, treating him like a magnificent hero even though his disastrous pandemic crisis management has been well-documented even by the Democrat-friendly NY Times and the liberal-leaning ProPublica group.
Unfortunately, mainstream media figures are still at it with the South Dakota COVID shaming, so much so that Noem penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal earlier this week defending the state and the decisions made by her and its other leaders in handling the outbreak.
In the piece, she noted that “many in the media have criticized” her anti-lockdown approach while characterizing her as a coronavirus “denier” who has been a “reckless” leader. She also pointed to how these same critics who routinely praise the states (ones run by Democratic governors, naturally) that have taken a draconian approach to managing the crisis conveniently leave out facts about their outbreaks that are completely at odds with established media narratives on what is the “right” or “wrong” approach to slowing the spread of the virus.
On Twitter earlier today, Noem took the hammer to the nail by way of an infographic that really slammed home the point about how the Democratic governors who allegedly did everything “right” in their states were seeing skyrocketing numbers in spite of that:
Graphs the media won't share with you.
California and New York locked down, closed businesses, and mandated masks. They did the "right" thing. And STILL cases are climbing. pic.twitter.com/pk1VtJ6075
— Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) December 10, 2020
Another state that has a Democratic governor who has implemented draconian policies is North Carolina, where we’re seeing record case numbers being reported every day. Oddly enough, it – like NY and CA – is also conveniently left out of the media’s periodic hit pieces on states with rising case counts.
It’s been pretty clear for a long time now that when it comes to reporting on how well (or not) governors are doing managing the Wuhan virus pandemic, the mainstream media likes to play favorites because narratives and all that – this despite facts like the ones Noem dropped that are inconvenient to those narratives.
As I’ve said before, it is the misleading stories from the media that have caused people to simply tune them out. There have been far too many instances to count over the course of the last several months where journalists have generated panics in their respective communities with reports that leave out vital context.
It’s critical that the mainstream media not sensationalize/editorialize their “objective” stories and give viewers and readers incomplete pictures of what’s happening in their communities, especially in comparison to other states.
They don’t need to sugarcoat what’s happening, but they need to avoid causing undue panic, too. Neither approach to reporting on a public health crisis does the public any good. Not at all.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member