[ May 5, 2024 ]
Why aren’t they subjected to house arrest like the rest of us? Why haven’t they relinquished their unalienable rights? Our constitutional freedoms have been stolen from us – no due process, no habeas corpus. The American people don’t even realize it. The media keeps telling us we have to. But they don’t. Most of my friends are out of work. We’ve lost everything.
They are doing more harm then good. Shut them down.
Why is the Media Exempt from Coronavirus Business Shutdowns?
Is sticking microphones in front of senior citizens not a public health hazard?
Story continues below advertisementBy Daniel Greenfield, Mar 27, 2020:
“You’re actually sitting too close,” President Trump remarked at a press briefing. “Really, we should probably get rid of about 75, 80 percent of you.”
Trump was only partly joking.
The White House Correspondents Association had asked its members to sit one seat apart at press briefings, but at a time when most businesses have been shut down even when they offer far more space to customers and employees, the sight of crowded press briefings is still surreally hypocritical.
Governor Jared Polis delivered his press briefing on social distancing surrounded by a huddle of other Colorado officials, including a sign language translator, and tightly packed reporters facing him. That’s not unusual. Governors and mayors have announced the shutdown of countless businesses for the sake of social distancing in the same format that is the opposite of social distancing.
The exemption for the media from coronavirus rules extends beyond these strange scenes.
When Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an order effectively shutting down most New York non-essential businesses, the list of essential organizations exempted from the order included hospitals, power plants, pharmacies, farms, banks, supermarkets, and the media. One of these items is not like the others.
The essential businesses provide necessary services that allow people to function. That’s not the media.
The question of what is an “essential business” is the difference between employment or unemployment, staying in business or going bankrupt, for millions of Americans. It’s a weighty financial and moral question that the media has entirely evaded by cutting in line and relying on its privilege.
A generation ago it might have been argued that the media provides important updates, but in the age of Twitter and handheld access to any website, the idea that the public is dependent on the media to stay informed about coronavirus health and safety information, or any other emergency issue, is silly.
If the authorities really need to alert the percentage of the population that uses radio and television, but not the internet, there’s always the Emergency Broadcasting System.
Forget the press conferences: those are bad enough and ought to go the way of phrenology and the buggy whip. But much of what the media does is either whip up panic from its offices or dispatch reporters to interview people. None of that accords with the requirements of social distancing.
When movie and television productions have been shut down because they’re an unsafe environment, why is crowding talking heads behind a desk and twenty times their number of crew into a studio okay?
Why is dispatching reporters to stick microphones in front of senior citizens at a Trader Joe’s or the emergency room of a hospital considered healthy or safe, rather than a public health hazard?
The media should be properly classified as entertainment and deemed non-essential. Aside from exploitative coronavirus coverage, much of what the media does is entertain, albeit badly, with celebrity gossip, scandals, shaming, cooking tips, viral videos, crossword puzzles, and anything that keeps it afloat.
None of that is essential.
And yet the Colorado Press Association dispatched a letter to Governor Polis demanding “assurances that the news reporting operations will continue to be an essential part of emergency personnel.”
Firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and reporters. Pick one that doesn’t belong in that category.
No one who drives a car off a snowy embankment into freezing waters looks upward hoping to see a camera and microphone, instead of a red jumpsuit or a blue uniform with a silver badge. If you’re not saving lives, you’re not emergency personnel. Smearing your political opponents is not an emergency.
The Florida Press Association wrote to Governor DeSantis pleading with him to exempt the media from “business shutdowns or shelter-in-place programs within Florida” because the media is “‘essential’ to public health and welfare.”
A gym does far more for public health than every single media outlet combined. And we’re closing the gyms.
The FPA claimed that “media organizations are essential businesses to remain open during the COVID-19 crisis in order to continue to inform the public about their health, safety and welfare and convey accurate, reliable and critical information at a time of great need.”
The media is many things: a source of accurate and reliable information isn’t one of them.
Any business that simply posts CDC advisories on its premises can do it better. Every platform is already embedding the same coronavirus advisories about social distancing and washing your hands.
But, mostly, the media has gotten its way.
Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania claimed that he was closing all “non-life sustaining” businesses and designated the media a “life-sustaining” business.
Whose life does the media sustain except, vampirically, its own?
Los Angeles County’s order treats “newspapers, magazines, television, radio, podcasts” as being on a par with truckers, dentists, and police officers. (And since this is California, “cannabis dispensaries”.) As did San Francisco, though beyond the media, it also took care to designate bicycle repair shops and cannabis dispensaries as essential businesses. This has been the template across California.
But who decided that the media is an essential business and why?
It’s not a First Amendment issue. Not when churches and synagogues have been shuttered. San Jose ordered a firearms store to shut down, deeming it a non-essential business. A firearms dealer is in the business of enabling the Second Amendment rights of people on a much broader scale than a newspaper is in the business of enabling the First Amendment rights of anyone except its employees.
San Jose’s definition of essential, which encompasses marijuana and media, but not guns, shows that the issue is not an objective one of need, but of values. And values are based on tribal feelings.
The CDC had warned that smoking and using marijuana increases coronavirus risks for younger people. Health advisories had warned drug users against sharing drug paraphernalia because it can spread the coronavirus. But San Jose chose to protect marijuana stores because it likes pot and hates guns.
California and New York’s governments really like the media even though it poses a health risk.
As the rolling shutdowns continue, the ultimate debate over the privileges of the media may be weighed by the White House. And the lobbying campaign is underway.
The Chamber of Commerce listed the media on its proposed roll of essential services in its letter to President Trump. The letter asks him to include the media on the list of federal exemptions.
Such decisions often end up being made by advisors and bureaucrats. This should not be one of them.
The media should not benefit from an exemption that it has done nothing to earn. Instead of serving a constructive function, it has whipped up panic, spread fear and doubt, sought out scapegoats, and behaved irresponsibly at every turn because it served its financial and ideological agendas. The last thing America needs is for hardworking people to be forced out of a job while the media gets a free pass.
It’s unjust and unfair for small businesses to have to shut their doors, while CNN goes on with business as usual. It’s wrong for the average American to be told he’s non-essential, but that Jim Acosta is.
President Trump should trash the media’s demand for an exemption from shutdown rules. And people should begin asking some tough questions about why they’re out of a job while the media swarms press briefings, sticks microphones in front of health care workers and children, and isn’t held accountable.
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27 Comments
4 years ago
Don’t worry Karma will be visiting them all very soon! #walkaway from the DNC-MSM Commiecrats!
4 years ago
DEM Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania is another Darwin Award winner. His brilliant contribution was to shut down PA turnpike rest stops till someone else pointed out truckers need to fill their gas tanks plus they’d prefer to use restrooms when needed.
It’s not as though truckers are spending their time using rest stops like disgraced NJ DEM Gov. Mcgreevey did, for male encounters in the men’s room, instead of running the state.
4 years ago
The liberal media army out to get Trump, needs all hands on deck while church goers must stay home or ELSE!
DEM Virginia Governor Northam makes attending church a criminal offense
Richmond, Va., Mar 25, 2020 / 11:00 am
(Remember him? Mr. Blackface, KKK dress up, and proud of passing an infanticide bill? Plenty of the liberal media attended for this announcement.)
Virginia governor Ralph Northam has made it a criminal offense to attend church services of more than 10 people. An executive order went into effect in the commonwealth on Tuesday, March 24, making any non-essential gatherings a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail or a fine of $2,500.
…
The executive order expires at 11:59 p.m. on April 23, 2020, and is subject to change at any time in response to ongoing concerns for public health during the coronavirus pandemic.
…
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/virginia-governor-makes-attending-church-a-criminal-offense-52677
4 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
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4 years ago
they still have the “agenda 21” to push down our throats.
4 years ago
Because the MS media has the ability to disseminate propaganda.
Euronews journalist Giorgia Orlandi
4 years ago
Reply to
Ari
She must have surely learned that from the Females in the MSM in the U.S., the hookers for our FBI. All they have to do is leak classified, discreational information.
4 years ago
How can anyone tell – they are all sick to begin with
4 years ago
I totally agree. I am totally fed up with liberal hysterics who believe in the validity and importance of their emotional displays and worst case scenarios. This has been going on since Trump was elected, so it’s nothing new. But now it is getting to the point where liberal hysterics are hurting themselves. I don’t have any idea what can be done but hopefully people will see how unhelpful the media is and just shut off the idiotic ones and look for sources which are rational and helpful.
I trust President Trump and his team are working to make the best of a bad situation. Everything they are doing makes sense. Slow down the spread. Develop the testing so we have a greater understanding of what this is, increase production of protective equipment for health care workers, increase the availability of hospital beds, develop treatments and vaccines as rapidly as possible. Now they are planning how to reopen the economy in the safest way.
People who intensely hate Trump and do not trust his leadership will suffer the most anxiety, which of course includes the liberal media and their followers, sorry but not sorry.
4 years ago
Reply to
RCCA
Of one thing you can be absolutely certain is any effort to open the economy and get America back to work will be greeted by an orchestrated crescendo of howls from the Dog Fart Media. The death of anyone will be attributed to Trump and his “recklessness” or “incompetence.” The DFM’s hysteria will have no bounds and will be broadcast from every DFM outlet n the country. This is the reason why brave reporters like Trish Regan are being removed. More will suffer a similar fate.
4 years ago
Reply to
John Acord
But now we know their pattern and We the People will fight as our numbers are greater by far then the MSM and the Democrats and their minions.
4 years ago
Reply to
RCCA
Maybe my husband will get a clue?
Nah, he’s an unmitigated disaster. Too much Jack, too many cigarettes, a pi ssy attitude. Let him go.
4 years ago
EXCELLENT QUESTION!!!
4 years ago
From the tiresome monotone we hear from CNN and BSDNC, it is obvious they spend too much time in close proximity to one another.
4 years ago
We ask; Why isn’t the media forced to shut down: It is my Opinion; THIS IS ALL ORCHESTRATED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY with CHINA!
MORE DIE OF THE EVERYDAY FLU every year THINK ABOUT IT……MSM is part and party to this deception and these people are turning against Americans to complete their destruction of America, We the People must stand strong against this plot.
4 years ago
Over 3/4 of the MSM is toxic.
Fox is now the purview of Rupert’s. D-I-Ls, and they are FEKINAXIS
4 years ago
So true. These lockdowns apply to us peasants not to our media overlords.
4 years ago
Because the federal government needs it’s propaganda machine continually running and spreading fear to subjugate the masses. It’s working beautifully. Trump and governors across the nation are hacking away at the constitution, any way they please and we’re letting them.
4 years ago
the corona spreaders
4 years ago
The lame stream media is doing what it always does: taking a story and using it to make Trump look bad. Unfortunately, Trump has been very proactive from the start of this latest crisis. He put a China travel ban in place within two weeks of the first known case of Wuhan flu. They call him racist and xenophobic for that move. Without that ban, we would most likely be in much worse shape. Look at Italy! They kept travel with China open and they have pretty much shut down everything because the spread is out of hand.
These “experts” they keep parading in front of us have never been right about anything. Why should we listen to them now?
