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> ...the media are pretty deliberately choosing metrics that are designed to exaggerate the US's handling of the crisis... "The media" would have had far less

> ...the media are pretty deliberately choosing metrics that are designed to exaggerate the US's handling of the crisis... "The media" would have had far less grist if Trump hadn't been astonishingly incoherent and outright lying much of the time. I think it's not a coincidence that a good number of nations with delusional tin-pot autocratic wannabee's have been hit very hard by covid-19.

throwaway894345 6y ago
> "The media" would have had far less grist if Trump hadn't been astonishingly incoherent and outright lying much of the time See, that's exactly the thing. Trump is absolutely a liar and incompetent and lots of other things, but it doesn't follow that the media has to lie to exaggerate these attributes. If the media contented itself to report the facts, they would expose Trump's lies and incompetence, the would preserve their own credibility, and they would reduce the overall volume of disinformation, partisanship, and other kinds of toxicity. Instead they play into his hand, presumably because there's a market for that kind of grifting.