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Covid 19 and The Media.pptx
- 1. The Media Within the context of American Government and Covid-19 pandemic crisis
- 2. Political Media in America • The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. • Most Americans believe this is essential for liberty and democracy. • The news media’s role: • Inform the public about current events. • Provide a forum for politicians and the public to debate policies and issues. • Act as a watchdog on the actions of politicians and government. • Most media in America is driven by the profit motive. • But many outlets also act in the public interest. In many authoritarian countries there is no freedom of the press; China’s authoritarian government supressed information about the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019, leading to a greater public health crisis. By providing a variety of perspectives and fact-checking sources the U.S. media strive to provide unbiased coverage of current events.
- 3. The Media and the COVID-19 Crisis 1. How did the media cover the pandemic? 2. How did politicians use the media during the pandemic? 3. How did the pandemic alter the relationship between the people and the media?
- 4. How did the media cover the pandemic? Since March 2020, news and events related to the coronavirus and the associated economic fall-out have occurred at a breakneck pace. Not since a major world war has an event commanded as much public attention for an extended period (multiple months) as the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. The U.S. had the most confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, and New York City, accounting for one-third of U.S. fatalities, became the epicenter of the global pandemic. The media’s coverage of the pandemic highlighted its role as an informant Leading national and state newspapers—Washington Post and the New York Times—provided free nearly real-time detailed interactive maps and tables tracking confirmed COVID-19 cases, fatalities, testing rates per million people and more for the fifty states, counties within states, and the nation. Millions of Americans turned to these sources daily to track the progress of the disease both nationally and for their state and local community. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=hp_hp-banner-low_web-gfx-death- tracker%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html The media provided state-by-state trackers of daily new cases, color coded from red for the fastest growth of new cases to white, the slowest growth. From the height of the pandemic in late March and April, by mid-May every state had moved into the light yellow or white stage (slow new case growth). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html This informed the public that the bite of the pandemic had subsided, as states began to reopen the economy.
- 5. How did the media cover the pandemic? Profit motive and the public interest • Paywalls require a subscription for readers to pay before reading the news. While most media are for-profit companies, they also serve a critical public service interest and are protected by the First Amendment. • Despite up to a 50 percent drop in ad revenue, most national news media (with the exception of the LA Times and the Boston Globe) have dropped their paywalls for coverage of coronavirus related news. • Some critics argue the news media should continue to have the paywalls to offset the lost ad revenue, arguing other businesses would not be forced to give away their product for free. https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/removing-paywalls-on-coronavirus-coverage-is- noble-it-also-makes-no-sense/
- 6. How did the media cover the pandemic? Media as informant: • Extensive tracking of coronavirus cases (informational role). Media as public square: • Social media revealed intense debates over stay-at-home orders, the efficacy of governmental responses to the crisis, and economic impacts. Media as watchdog: • Tracked where stimulus money flowed and the economic fall-out. • Tracked the needs and delivery of protective equipment and shortages of critical medical supplies, including face masks and testing. • Analyzed who was in charge of response, and who was benefitting from government action. Profit motive versus the public interest: • Most outlets eliminated paywalls for COVID-19 coverage.
- 7. How did the media cover the pandemic? Media as informant: • Extensive tracking of coronavirus cases (informational role). Media as public square: • Social media revealed intense debates over stay-at-home orders, the efficacy of governmental responses to the crisis, and economic impacts. Media as watchdog: • Tracked where stimulus money flowed and the economic fall-out. • Tracked the needs and delivery of protective equipment and shortages of critical medical supplies, including face masks and testing. • Analyzed who was in charge of response, and who was benefitting from government action. Profit motive versus the public interest: • Most outlets eliminated paywalls for COVID-19 coverage.
- 8. How did politicians use the media during the pandemic? President Trump • Held daily briefings with Coronavirus Task Force. • Continued reliance on Twitter for unfiltered public outreach, defense of crisis response, and accusation/blame of other people and countries. Governors and local officials • Daily briefings from NY Governor Andrew Cuomo • Daily briefings from IA Governor Kim Reynolds
- 9. The Government and the Media
- 10. How did the pandemic alter the relationship between the people and the media? • Increased trust in the news media vs. made-up/fake news on social media • Partisan divisions over trusted news sources remained. • Continued misinformation on social media • Increase in number of people following the news • Young people less engaged in following pandemic news coverage • Increased reliance on local news
- 11. Young Americans Least Likely to Follow COVID-19 News Ages Percent of US adults who are following news about the coronavirus outbreak very closely, March 10-16 Percent of US adults who are following news about the coronavirus outbreak very closely, March 19-24 All U.S. Adults 51% 57% Ages 18-29 40 42 Ages 30-49 44 54 Ages 50-64 54 63 65 plus 66 69 51 40 44 54 66 57 42 54 63 69 All adults Ages 18-29 30-29 50-64 65+ Percentage of U.S. adults who are following news about the coronavirus outbreak very closely March 10-16 March 19-24
- 12. Think About It: The Media and the COVID-19 Crisis • Through the crisis, do you think the media fulfilled its role as an information source? What was given too much coverage and what information was ignored or underplayed? • Did social media help inform the public during the pandemic, or was it overwhelmed by misinformation and conspiracy theories? • Should social media companies be held accountable for the information shown on their platforms? Should YouTube and Twitter follow Facebook’s lead and remove or flag misinformation? • How important was state and local news compared to national news for you? How difficult is it to find quality information (news) about your state or local community?
Editor's Notes
- Since March 2020, news and events related to the coronavirus and the associated economic fall-out have occurred at a breakneck pace. Not since a major world war has an event commanded as much public attention for an extended period (multiple months) as the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. The U.S. had the most confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, and New York City, accounting for one-third of U.S. fatalities, became the epicenter of the global pandemic. The media’s coverage of the pandemic highlighted its role as an informant Leading national and state newspapers—Washington Post and the New York Times—provided free nearly real-time detailed interactive maps and tables tracking confirmed COVID-19 cases, fatalities, testing rates per million people and more for the fifty states, counties within states, and the nation. Millions of Americans turned to these sources daily to track the progress of the disease both nationally and for their state and local community. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=hp_hp-banner-low_web-gfx-death-tracker%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html The media provided state-by-state trackers of daily new cases, color coded from red for the fastest growth of new cases to white, the slowest growth. From the height of the pandemic in late March and April, by mid-May every state had moved into the light yellow or white stage (slow new case growth). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html This informed the public that the bite of the pandemic had subsided, as states began to reopen the economy. Media as a Public Square The media acted as a public square, with intense debates by political leaders and policy makers over the wisdom of state stay-at-home orders, whether President Trump’s decisions should have been guided by a national plan to combat the pandemic, and the economic impacts including historic unemployment rates not seen since the 1930s Great Depression. An illustrative example is media coverage of President Obama’s commencement addresses, criticizing the nation’s leaders for failing in their handling of the pandemic. He said the current economic and health crisis reveals a lot about the nation. “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.” Obama said the pandemic had more fully exposed the existing inequalities in society. “A disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country. We see it in the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.” “Obama criticizes nation’s leaders for bungled handling of coronavirus pandemic,” The Washington Post, May 16, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/16/obama-commencement-speech-2020/ Public Health Watchdog Acting as a watchdog on the government’s response to the pandemic, the media covered the lack of testing and critical medical supplies such as face masks. Coronavirus outbreaks were the worst in meatpacking plants (100 plants experienced outbreaks), nursing homes, and prisons, where people live and work in crowded spaces. African American and Latino communities also disproportionately experienced negative effects of the pandemic. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html. The media extensively covered trends in these four areas. The media’s role as a watchdog revealed that the U.S. government lacked a master plan for assessing the need for and distribution of masks, testing swabs, and other medical equipment. In testimony before Congress, a former Department of Health and Human Services vaccine expert said his superiors dismissed urgent warnings in January and February 2020 about the shortage of N95 respirator masks and delayed working on a U.S. made vaccine by not obtaining samples of the virus from China early enough. During the height of the pandemic, President Trump often touted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 remedy. While the federal government invested in hydroxychloroquine, the medicine was later abandoned by the government since medical trials showed it can cause heart problems in patients. “Ousted vaccine official testifies country still lacks master plan amid pandemic,” The Washington Post, May 14, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/ousted-vaccine-official-testifies-country-still-lacks-master-plan-amid-pandemic/2020/05/14/e9b6cd64-960f-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html As an informant and public health watchdog, the media performed better in some areas than others. In reporting the gruesome headlines, early on the media often missed critical context for the public to understand the numbers; the focus was often on total fatalities from COVID-19 rather than fatalities divided by the population to create a death rate. Later during the pandemic, the New York Times and other news outlets began to report COVID-19 fatalities as a death rate per 100,000 people. The media often failed to provide context for the U.S. fatalities from the pandemic. For example, in the U.S. roughly 25 people per 100,000 inhabitants died from COVID-19 according to the World Health Organization. This compares to an annual U.S. traffic fatality rate of 12.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (another 4.4 people per 100,000 are permanently disabled). Traffic fatalities, of course, are not contagious. Each day of the pandemic, confirmed deaths from COVID-19 did not exceed .01 per 100,000 people according to Stanford’s Economic Opportunity Insight daily tracker. Annual death rates from other causes are considerably higher, including smoking, cancer, and heart disease. This context does not belittle the seriousness of the pandemic. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/common.html https://tracker.opportunityinsights.org/ https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/where-the-u-s-ranks-in-covid-19-deaths-per-capita/ Economic Health Watchdog The media extensively covered the economic fallout of the pandemic, as state stay-at-home orders caused many businesses to close (temporarily or permanently). The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows national unemployment rates grew from a normal 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent in March and 14.7 percent in April 2020. At the height of the 1930s Great Depression, unemployment was at 25 percent of the labor force. Overall there were 27,000 jobs lost in March and 20 million in April. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf The media also reported the problems with the government data, and that the unemployment rates from April should have been 20 percent not 15 percent, meaning 1 in 5 people in the labor force were out of work. The Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor said there was an incorrect classification of many individuals in April…”Interviewers were told to classify people who were employed [but] absent from work due to COVID-related reasons as temporarily unemployed. Many did this incorrectly—correcting for this error raises the unemployment rate to nearly 20 percent,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaharziv/2020/05/10/dont-be-fooled-by-official-unemployment-rate-of-147-the-real-figure-is-even-scarier/#713eb9b955dd Without a monthly salary, individuals and their families will find it challenging to pay their home mortgage/rent, utilities including Wi-Fi and cellphone access, buy food and basic necessities, and obtain medicines. Since health care insurance in the U.S. is tied to employment, these households will also be without health insurance. The Urban Institute reports that 15 million low salary workers (earn $44,000 a year or less) have lost their jobs since March 2020. Roughly half of the labor force are lower income workers. “Where Low-Income Jobs Are Being Lost to COVID-19, Weekly updates on the places and industries most at risk.” Urban Institute, April 11, 2020 & April 17, 2020, May 6, 2020. https://www.urban.org/features/where-low-income-jobs-are-being-lost-covid-19 The massive economic downturn in the U.S. can be seen in drops in consumer spending using new private data from credit card companies. Stanford economist Raj Chetty launched the first real-time economic tracker for COVID-19 on people, businesses, and communities; partnering with Womply (a software company serving small businesses and app developers). The tracker shows massive drops in weekly consumer spending nationwide and for states, cities, and counties. In the United States, for the week ending April 30, 2020, total spending by all consumers decreased by 20.5 percent compared to early January 2020. April 1st was at its worst week nationwide, 37 percent points lower than normal. https://tracker.opportunityinsights.org/ Profit motive and the public interest Paywalls require a subscription for readers to pay before reading the news. While most media are for-profit companies, they also serve a critical public service interest and are protected by the First Amendment. Despite up to a 50 percent drop in ad revenue, most national news media (with the exception of the LA Times and the Boston Globe) have dropped their paywalls for coverage of coronavirus related news. Some critics argue the news media should continue to have the paywalls to offset the lost ad revenue, arguing other businesses would not be forced to give away their product for free. https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/removing-paywalls-on-coronavirus-coverage-is-noble-it-also-makes-no-sense/
- Since March 2020, news and events related to the coronavirus and the associated economic fall-out have occurred at a breakneck pace. Not since a major world war has an event commanded as much public attention for an extended period (multiple months) as the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. The U.S. had the most confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, and New York City, accounting for one-third of U.S. fatalities, became the epicenter of the global pandemic. The media’s coverage of the pandemic highlighted its role as an informant Leading national and state newspapers—Washington Post and the New York Times—provided free nearly real-time detailed interactive maps and tables tracking confirmed COVID-19 cases, fatalities, testing rates per million people and more for the fifty states, counties within states, and the nation. Millions of Americans turned to these sources daily to track the progress of the disease both nationally and for their state and local community. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=hp_hp-banner-low_web-gfx-death-tracker%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html The media provided state-by-state trackers of daily new cases, color coded from red for the fastest growth of new cases to white, the slowest growth. From the height of the pandemic in late March and April, by mid-May every state had moved into the light yellow or white stage (slow new case growth). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html This informed the public that the bite of the pandemic had subsided, as states began to reopen the economy. Media as a Public Square The media acted as a public square, with intense debates by political leaders and policy makers over the wisdom of state stay-at-home orders, whether President Trump’s decisions should have been guided by a national plan to combat the pandemic, and the economic impacts including historic unemployment rates not seen since the 1930s Great Depression. An illustrative example is media coverage of President Obama’s commencement addresses, criticizing the nation’s leaders for failing in their handling of the pandemic. He said the current economic and health crisis reveals a lot about the nation. “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.” Obama said the pandemic had more fully exposed the existing inequalities in society. “A disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country. We see it in the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.” “Obama criticizes nation’s leaders for bungled handling of coronavirus pandemic,” The Washington Post, May 16, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/16/obama-commencement-speech-2020/ Public Health Watchdog Acting as a watchdog on the government’s response to the pandemic, the media covered the lack of testing and critical medical supplies such as face masks. Coronavirus outbreaks were the worst in meatpacking plants (100 plants experienced outbreaks), nursing homes, and prisons, where people live and work in crowded spaces. African American and Latino communities also disproportionately experienced negative effects of the pandemic. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html. The media extensively covered trends in these four areas. The media’s role as a watchdog revealed that the U.S. government lacked a master plan for assessing the need for and distribution of masks, testing swabs, and other medical equipment. In testimony before Congress, a former Department of Health and Human Services vaccine expert said his superiors dismissed urgent warnings in January and February 2020 about the shortage of N95 respirator masks and delayed working on a U.S. made vaccine by not obtaining samples of the virus from China early enough. During the height of the pandemic, President Trump often touted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 remedy. While the federal government invested in hydroxychloroquine, the medicine was later abandoned by the government since medical trials showed it can cause heart problems in patients. “Ousted vaccine official testifies country still lacks master plan amid pandemic,” The Washington Post, May 14, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/ousted-vaccine-official-testifies-country-still-lacks-master-plan-amid-pandemic/2020/05/14/e9b6cd64-960f-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html As an informant and public health watchdog, the media performed better in some areas than others. In reporting the gruesome headlines, early on the media often missed critical context for the public to understand the numbers; the focus was often on total fatalities from COVID-19 rather than fatalities divided by the population to create a death rate. Later during the pandemic, the New York Times and other news outlets began to report COVID-19 fatalities as a death rate per 100,000 people. The media often failed to provide context for the U.S. fatalities from the pandemic. For example, in the U.S. roughly 25 people per 100,000 inhabitants died from COVID-19 according to the World Health Organization. This compares to an annual U.S. traffic fatality rate of 12.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (another 4.4 people per 100,000 are permanently disabled). Traffic fatalities, of course, are not contagious. Each day of the pandemic, confirmed deaths from COVID-19 did not exceed .01 per 100,000 people according to Stanford’s Economic Opportunity Insight daily tracker. Annual death rates from other causes are considerably higher, including smoking, cancer, and heart disease. This context does not belittle the seriousness of the pandemic. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/common.html https://tracker.opportunityinsights.org/ https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/where-the-u-s-ranks-in-covid-19-deaths-per-capita/ Profit motive and the public interest Paywalls require a subscription for readers to pay before reading the news. While most media are for-profit companies, they also serve a critical public service interest and are protected by the First Amendment. Despite up to a 50 percent drop in ad revenue, most national news media (with the exception of the LA Times and the Boston Globe) have dropped their paywalls for coverage of coronavirus related news. Some critics argue the news media should continue to have the paywalls to offset the lost ad revenue, arguing other businesses would not be forced to give away their product for free. https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/removing-paywalls-on-coronavirus-coverage-is-noble-it-also-makes-no-sense/
- Since March 2020, news and events related to the coronavirus and the associated economic fall-out have occurred at a breakneck pace. Not since a major world war has an event commanded as much public attention for an extended period (multiple months) as the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. The U.S. had the most confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, and New York City, accounting for one-third of U.S. fatalities, became the epicenter of the global pandemic. The media’s coverage of the pandemic highlighted its role as an informant Leading national and state newspapers—Washington Post and the New York Times—provided free nearly real-time detailed interactive maps and tables tracking confirmed COVID-19 cases, fatalities, testing rates per million people and more for the fifty states, counties within states, and the nation. Millions of Americans turned to these sources daily to track the progress of the disease both nationally and for their state and local community. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=hp_hp-banner-low_web-gfx-death-tracker%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html The media provided state-by-state trackers of daily new cases, color coded from red for the fastest growth of new cases to white, the slowest growth. From the height of the pandemic in late March and April, by mid-May every state had moved into the light yellow or white stage (slow new case growth). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html This informed the public that the bite of the pandemic had subsided, as states began to reopen the economy. Media as a Public Square The media acted as a public square, with intense debates by political leaders and policy makers over the wisdom of state stay-at-home orders, whether President Trump’s decisions should have been guided by a national plan to combat the pandemic, and the economic impacts including historic unemployment rates not seen since the 1930s Great Depression. An illustrative example is media coverage of President Obama’s commencement addresses, criticizing the nation’s leaders for failing in their handling of the pandemic. He said the current economic and health crisis reveals a lot about the nation. “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.” Obama said the pandemic had more fully exposed the existing inequalities in society. “A disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country. We see it in the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.” “Obama criticizes nation’s leaders for bungled handling of coronavirus pandemic,” The Washington Post, May 16, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/16/obama-commencement-speech-2020/ Public Health Watchdog Acting as a watchdog on the government’s response to the pandemic, the media covered the lack of testing and critical medical supplies such as face masks. Coronavirus outbreaks were the worst in meatpacking plants (100 plants experienced outbreaks), nursing homes, and prisons, where people live and work in crowded spaces. African American and Latino communities also disproportionately experienced negative effects of the pandemic. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html. The media extensively covered trends in these four areas. The media’s role as a watchdog revealed that the U.S. government lacked a master plan for assessing the need for and distribution of masks, testing swabs, and other medical equipment. In testimony before Congress, a former Department of Health and Human Services vaccine expert said his superiors dismissed urgent warnings in January and February 2020 about the shortage of N95 respirator masks and delayed working on a U.S. made vaccine by not obtaining samples of the virus from China early enough. During the height of the pandemic, President Trump often touted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 remedy. While the federal government invested in hydroxychloroquine, the medicine was later abandoned by the government since medical trials showed it can cause heart problems in patients. “Ousted vaccine official testifies country still lacks master plan amid pandemic,” The Washington Post, May 14, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/ousted-vaccine-official-testifies-country-still-lacks-master-plan-amid-pandemic/2020/05/14/e9b6cd64-960f-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html As an informant and public health watchdog, the media performed better in some areas than others. In reporting the gruesome headlines, early on the media often missed critical context for the public to understand the numbers; the focus was often on total fatalities from COVID-19 rather than fatalities divided by the population to create a death rate. Later during the pandemic, the New York Times and other news outlets began to report COVID-19 fatalities as a death rate per 100,000 people. The media often failed to provide context for the U.S. fatalities from the pandemic. For example, in the U.S. roughly 25 people per 100,000 inhabitants died from COVID-19 according to the World Health Organization. This compares to an annual U.S. traffic fatality rate of 12.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (another 4.4 people per 100,000 are permanently disabled). Traffic fatalities, of course, are not contagious. Each day of the pandemic, confirmed deaths from COVID-19 did not exceed .01 per 100,000 people according to Stanford’s Economic Opportunity Insight daily tracker. Annual death rates from other causes are considerably higher, including smoking, cancer, and heart disease. This context does not belittle the seriousness of the pandemic. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/common.html https://tracker.opportunityinsights.org/ https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/where-the-u-s-ranks-in-covid-19-deaths-per-capita/ Profit motive and the public interest Paywalls require a subscription for readers to pay before reading the news. While most media are for-profit companies, they also serve a critical public service interest and are protected by the First Amendment. Despite up to a 50 percent drop in ad revenue, most national news media (with the exception of the LA Times and the Boston Globe) have dropped their paywalls for coverage of coronavirus related news. Some critics argue the news media should continue to have the paywalls to offset the lost ad revenue, arguing other businesses would not be forced to give away their product for free. https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/removing-paywalls-on-coronavirus-coverage-is-noble-it-also-makes-no-sense/
- President Trump appointed the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which began with daily briefings, but then became less frequent as the pandemic intensified. There was widespread discussion that the task force would disband. In mid-May, Vice President Pence, chairman of the Coronavirus Task Force, announced new members and that the Task Force would continue indefinitely. The Task Force eventually entered a new phase, focused on getting Americans back to work and allowing businesses to reopen. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/new-members-white-house-coronavirus-task-force-announced/ New York Department of Public Health https://www.health.ny.gov/ As of May 15, the state of New York had almost 30,000 COVID-19 fatalities, the highest of the fifty states. Governor Andrew Cuomo held briefings almost daily to inform state residents about COVID-related data and response plans. Cuomo emphasized reliance on data and facts, emphasized individual’s need to socially-distance and wear masks, and was usually careful not to cast blame on the federal government, though he did express dismay that there wasn’t more federal aid to state and local governments. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#states Iowa Department of Public Health COVID-19 website, including Governor Kim Reynolds Disaster Proclamations https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/ https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/pages/proclamations Reynolds issued daily news briefings throughout the pandemic for new cases and the death toll in the state, reporting outbreaks in nursing homes and meat packing plants, and promoted her Test Iowa initiative to test as many residents of the state as possible. Iowa made national news when coronavirus outbreaks in the state’s major meat packing plants caused many plants to temporarily close. One-third of all pork consumed in the U.S. is produced in Iowa. President Trump used his emergency powers to require meatpacking plants to remain in operation during the pandemic to prevent food shortages nationwide. Governor Reynolds, a Republican, refused to close the state’s meat packing plants arguing it was an essential business. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/22/tyson-waterloo-meat-shortage-coronavirus/ As of May 15, the state of Iowa had 349 COVID-19 fatalities, roughly in the middle of the states. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#states
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- Increased Trust in News Media In April 2020, most Americans (70 percent) said the news media were doing very (30 percent) or somewhat well (40 percent). This high approval is a marked departure from the past. Pew reports strong partisan divisions in trust of the news media with Democrats generally trusting the news media and Republican distrust of the media growing since 2014. Overall, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view many news platforms as untrustworthy, while Democrats and independents who lean Democratic see most of those sources as credible. https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization-and-the-2020-election-a-nation-divided/ COVID-19 disrupted this trend, with generally high approval of the media’s coverage of COVID-19 and less partisan divisions. https://www.journalism.org/2020/03/18/americans-immersed-in-covid-19-news-most-think-media-are-doing-fairly-well-covering-it/ At the same time, half of American adults (48 percent) say they have seen some misinformation about COVID-19 on social media. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52662348; https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/epidemiology-misinformation-coronavirus-covid19-conspiracy-theory More than one-fourth of most-viewed coronavirus videos on YouTube contain "misleading or inaccurate information.” Globally the misleading videos had been viewed millions of times. Facebook implemented a new policy notifying users if they had engaged with a post that had been removed for including misinformation (false claims, hoaxes, conspiracy theories) about the pandemic. Despite these policies, watchdog organizations say Facebook pages with millions of followers are posting debunked science and conspiracy theories and are generally not working. https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-misinformation-spreads-on-facebook-watchdog-says-11587436159 Google, YouTube, and Twitter have not adopted similar policies. Increase in People Following the News Pew reported that 9 in 10 Americans (92 percent in March, 87 percent in April) were following coronavirus news fairly or very closely. The public health crisis lead to a 40 percentage-point increase in following the news closely. (In March, before the pandemic, just 51 percent of Americans reported following the news very closely.) Young people are less likely to follow news about COVID-19 than older people; 70 percent of those age 65 and older were following the news about the coronavirus regularly, compared to 40 percent of people age 18-29. Reliance on State and Local News During ordinary times: The public pays far more attention to national news than local news. Before the pandemic and the increased demand for local news, Pew’s State of the News Media reported that audience for local TV news has been steadily declining, down annual 10 percent for morning news and 14 percent for late night and evening news. “5 key takeaways about the state of the news media in 2018,” Pew Research Center, July 23, 2019 https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/23/key-takeaways-state-of-the-news-media-2018/ Older Americans are the most likely to tune into local news. During COVID-19 61 percent of Americans paid equal attention to national and local coronavirus news coverage. An additional 23 percent are paying more attention to state and local news coverage of the pandemic (Pew). https://www.journalism.org/2020/04/29/about-seven-in-ten-u-s-adults-say-they-need-to-take-breaks-from-covid-19-news/
- https://www.journalism.org/2020/04/22/older-americans-continue-to-follow-covid-19-news-more-closely-than-younger-adults/