Fox News deserves blame for America's poor coronavirus response

Slate

"The American coronavirus crisis—in which governmental inaction and avoidance now threatens millions of lives and positions us to have the worst response to this pandemic of any developed country—is the inadvertent product of a concerted, decadeslong right-wing media effort to empower useful idiots and ideologues who will commit to policies that further enrich a coterie of plutocrats while rendering threadbare the fabric of middle-class society," says Justin Peters. "For almost 25 years, Fox News has promoted risibly easy answers to big questions while waging war on legitimate expertise. The network has systematically given prominent platforms to fringe theorists and hacks who present as respected experts and pragmatists. It has weaponized its viewers’ latent anti-intellectualism into active distrust of all sources located outside of the right-wing mediasphere. It has profited by airing commercials intended to convince gullible old people to sink their retirement savings into specious investments. It has consistently characterized government bureaucracies as hotbeds of conspiratorial intrigue, and an expansive federal system as the unequivocal enemy of liberty, thus tacitly sanctioning the sorts of paranoid ideologues who would preemptively decimate America’s public health infrastructure and interpret stay-at-home orders as intolerable and illegitimate signs of government overreach. It has spent decades setting the stage for the maddening, unnecessary tragedy that is now playing out all around us." ALSO: Sean Hannity spent Thursday night ranting against "The Media's Wreckless Behavior."