Dispatch from Coronaville: In Praise of the Free Press

The media gets a bad rap these days.  And deservedly so.  In many ways the standards for what qualify as journalism have never been lower.  In my opinion, the news-especially television news--has gotten way too "entertaining."  When the goal is to keep the viewer watching, the choices about what to show and how to show it are compromised.  A good news source should be--at least a little--boring.

But frankly criticizing the media is too easy. And it's also a bit of a cop-out.  Today I'm here to sing the praises of the free press. I've become convinced that the free press is the only thing standing between us and the complete destruction of our society.  Of all the first amendment guarantees, the protection of the press is the most important. Without it the freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and petition could be snatched away and no one would say boo. Or rather, anyone who did would be like that tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it.  So watch out for someone who constantly complains about the press and describes the media as evil. That's someone frustrated that they can't do what they want without that annoying little voice piping up, "Excuse me, Mr. President?"

I would rather have the cacophony currently in place with cable news, talk radio, the networks, podcasts, blog posts, talking head pundits, and random folks on YouTube all vying for our attention, than to have some governmental arbiter of what qualifies as News acting as a gatekeeper.  Yes, 90% of it is nonsense, but I like that in this country we have the freedom (and I would argue, the responsibility) to sort through all of it.  Yes, I would rather live in a country that allows Fox News (which I view to be one of the single most damaging influences to American critical thought) than one that doesn't. As long as we have a free press there is very little darkness in which to hide. Any attempt to bamboozle the public will invariably be called out by some pesky reporter. The free press is why I don't believe in conspiracy theories (I'll expand on this in a later post). 

The real problem in this country isn't the media, right-wing or liberal. The problem is us. We have never been lazier, never more insistent in being entertained at all tim2,es, never less inclined to do the work of sorting truth from error, (Don't believe the lie that it's impossible).  We are more eager than ever to challenge those we disagree with and far less interested in challenging ourselves. We've been given a great gift in our unfettered media and I fear we are squandering it.  Today's media environment is strongly incentivized to give us what we want.  We need to start wanting different things.

My news sources? The New York Times, NPR (including my local affiliate, WOSU for local news), Time Magazine, and The Week are the big ones. I almost never watch television news of any kind. I'm feel I'm pretty attuned to bias in what I consume. Rather than identifying content that doesn't spin the way I think it should, I look for red flags like inflammatory language  and things that get my emotions churning. I make an effort to differentiate between editorial content and "hard news" and I'm especially cautious of a heavy diet of op-eds. If everything I'm consuming brings out a strong emotional response of "Yeah, that's right! Finally someone telling it like it is!" I'm on dangerous ground.

And now to the numbers, sourced from the New York Times database.

As of today the United States has had 2,173,554 cases of COVID-19 and 117,738 deaths. This represents a 3.7% increase in cases and a 1.8% increase in deaths over the past three days.  This is over 12,000 more cases and about 500 more deaths than I had predicted. Based on these percentages I would expect 2,253,976 total cases by Saturday, June 20 and 119,857 total deaths.

All three states are up, with Florida continuing to reach for ever higher heights with around 7,500 new cases in the past three days.  At the rate the state is going it's going to blow off the chart again. Ohio posted it's largest gain in new cases since May 27 and Nebraska jumped significantly as well, though neither state is even in the same league with Florida.

Total Cases:

Florida: 82,711 total cases,0.38% of the population

Ohio: 42,422 total cases, 0.36% of the population. The extent of Florida's increase in cases is such that for the first time the state has a higher percentage of the state's population infected than does Ohio.

Nebraska: 17,226 total cases, 0.88% of the population.

Deaths are up in Florida and Nebraska and down in Ohio. Unfortunately one of those deaths was the father of a friend of ours. He passed this morning.

Total Deaths:

Florida: 3,017, a rate of 3.6%

Ohio: 2611, a rate of 6.2%

Nebraska: 239, a rate of 1.4%