Vox founder and current NYT columnist Ezra Klein called out NYC-based media as well as CNN for ignoring governors that got the response better than NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“There were better governors and better state policies but the media is based in New York and NYC was a disaster so Cuomo’s news conferences got media attention no other governor could touch,” he tweeted:
I raged about this at the time but New York's early COVID response was poor. There were better governors and better state policies but the media is based in New York and NYC was a disaster so Cuomo's news conferences got media attention no other governor could touch.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 2, 2021
Klein went on to write that “Cuomo wasn’t the right protagonist for this story”:
Cuomo wasn't uniquely ahead-of-the-curve on COVID and so got lionized, and now is falling from grace. It was always a weird convergence of where the media was and where he was, and it overwhelmed the obvious, even then, fact that he wasn't the right protagonist for this story.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 2, 2021
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CNN’s role in all of this really needs to be highlighted as a big main reason for the governor’s national popularity:
(And also Cuomo had a known national name, and a brother with a CNN show. That helped, too. )
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 2, 2021
And, to Klein’s credit, Vox did point this out back then:
Anyway, just to make clear this isn't retconning: https://t.co/mOkE9OFonp
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 2, 2021
But, to be clear, Vox didn’t go after Cuomo in that article:
The one ? article you cite in the left Cuomo largely untouched (and went after DiBlasio harder) so I’m gonna need more if you’re claiming your influential rage was articulated to counteract that which you now critique. https://t.co/eeH2UYFSII
— David Brauer (@dbrauer) March 2, 2021
And it was quite obvious at the time that Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio were slow to respond:
When everything was defined in terms of contrast with Trump and Cuomo had immediate ability to command the media stage, this was an outcome that was easy to predict. But March 2020 in NY was not good and both the gov and NYC mayor were slow in responding. https://t.co/8IUzpNyNRq
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 2, 2021
So, maybe skip the victory lap?
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