At last 2020 is behind us and despite the media congratulating themselves on making it through the toughest year of their careers, mainstream journalists (and fringe conspiracy theorists who work for the mainstream media, e.g., Joy Reid) didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory. The Russian collusion story fell apart and impeachment was a dud (Joe Biden didn’t even bother bringing it up during the campaign), so the media had to turn its attention to other ways to make the administration look bad.
Drew Holden has compiled a top-ten list of the media’s worst moments of 2020, and some of them surprised us — mostly because the newer train wrecks had distracted us from previous train wrecks. See if you agree:
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The Year’s Worst Media Moments: 2020 Edition
Below is a top 10 of common media takes & narratives that aged, well, imperfectly.
Starting w/ #10: remember when Trump was going to use the Post Office to steal the election? @JoyAnnReid, @VICE, @ajplus & @ananavarro do. pic.twitter.com/phxM9BNr0f
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
How about Jamie Lee Curtis hurriedly tweeting a photo of a guy in a red cap “stealing” a mail truck? Or how about Reuters running a photo of “discarded” mailboxes stacked up in a pile of junk, carefully cropped to leave out that they were at a powder-coating facility to be refurbished?
#9: Early COVID coverage
I tried to cut some slack on early coronavirus predictions. But it’s worth reflecting on the way we talked about the virus back when it first started & how many people were so confidently wrong, like @Slate, @USATODAY, @thehill & @businessinsider. pic.twitter.com/0Dkqoxq9pq
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
We remember very well being told that the flu was much more dangerous and a bigger concern.
#8: Masks
The worst specific coverage around the early outbreak was on masks.
Especially because the pro-mask crowd can be so militant these days, it’s worth remembering what the conversation looked like back then.Some of the worst were @CNN, @MSNBC, @ABC & @washingtonpost. pic.twitter.com/2Rc4tWvrqn
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
#7: A rushed vaccine
Prior to the election, we were told that Trump would rush out a potential COVID vaccine. That didn’t happen, and now the media won’t even give credit to the Trump Admin for the vaccine. Here’s: @VanityFair, @BuzzFeedNews, @jonathanchait & @ForeignPolicy. pic.twitter.com/LIO8wt4Unf
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
“Will anyone trust serial liar Donald Trump’s coronavirus vaccine?” “Trump’s vaccine can’t be trusted.” And now we’re seeing news stories about even frontline medical workers refusing the vaccine. Wonder why?
#6: War with Iran
Speaking of things we were promised, by now we should be months into war with Iran, to hear @ForeignPolicy, @AP, @CNN, and @Reuters tell it (among MANY others).
That a potential war doesn’t even crack the top 5 is a testament to the year we’ve had. pic.twitter.com/OJiqFpDPXL
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
#5: No vaccine in 2020
There have been millions of coronavirus vaccines distributed as the year ends. We were promised this simply wasn’t possible before the election.
Here’s a smattering of examples from @Yamiche, @NPR (fact checks, man), @abcnews and @NBCNews. pic.twitter.com/rDIKPLVhxZ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
Honorable Mention: whatever this was from @BillKristol.
Still trying to sort through this one, but I couldn’t leave it out, especially after he doubled down on it today.
No Insurrection Act yet, anyway. pic.twitter.com/neAFWTrC0r
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
#4: Defending China
While there may be some deserved slack for the early coverage of coronavirus in general, there’s no excuse for parroting Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
But that’s exactly what @NewYorker, @qz, @CNN and @YahooNews (wtf with this headline??) did. pic.twitter.com/Iars2TJbMD
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
Check out the New Year’s Eve photos of thousands packed into the town square in Wuhan to celebrate.
#3 Hunter’s laptop
While much of the Russia story was prior to 2020, we got one notable entry: the idea, absent evidence, that Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation & not to be reported on. The news blew up weeks later.@NPR, @MSNBC, @CNN & @JoyAnnReid. pic.twitter.com/QYlXCWMqGD
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
Never forget NPR’s outright refusal to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”
#2: “Mostly peaceful” protests
In the last few months, America saw its most violent & destructive riots in decades. Despite this, the media insisted that these were “mostly peaceful” protests.
This gets bonus points for ubiquity, including: @ABC, @USATODAY, @CBSNews & @Reuters. pic.twitter.com/Drc7h8Yfx5
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
And, finally, at #1: Hydroxychloroquine
This remains the weirdest, and surely most shameful, Orange Man Bad news cycle, where the media wrote off a promising treatment for a global pandemic simply because Trump liked it. Featuring @CNN, @brianstelter, @MSNBC and @Yamiche. pic.twitter.com/Xqky1AUB8d
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
This was a surprise entry for us, but he’s right: It was shocking how the media turned against hydroxychloroquine once President Trump said it could be a “game-changer” in the fight against COVID-19. And remember those early headlines about the man who died taking hydroxychloroquine because Trump talked it up … except it wasn’t hydroxychloroquine he was given by his wife but fish-tank solvent?
It can be easy, in a 24/7 news environment, to forget what previous predictions and ideas were common. But I think it’s worth reflecting on, particularly since these same people are still making predictions and driving the conversation around innumerable other important issues.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
So perhaps in 2021 our collective New Years resolution can be to slow down, see our political opponents as three-dimensional and not mere strawmen, and recognize that there is much that we simply don’t know.
And maybe bite our tongue, once in a while, as a result.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
Even if we all can’t muster this, it’s absolutely imperative that the national media does, if they want to have any hope of regaining the credibility that they’ve spent much of this past year lighting on fire through these and other news cycles.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) January 1, 2021
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