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You mean their documentation of the horrors of an absolutely real pandemic which many Americans have been falsely led to believe is a fraud? Even people litera
by lsiebert 6y ago
You mean their documentation of the horrors of an absolutely real pandemic which many Americans have been falsely led to believe is a fraud?
Even people literally dying of it don't believe in it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/16/south-dakota-nurse-coronavirus-deniers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/16/south-dakot...
- uberman 6y agoYes that. Let's be clear here. If someone has covid and is dying in a hospital about to be ventilated and awake for the last time in their lives and they refuse to admit that maybe this is serous then watching some Intercept crisis porn would not have convinced them either. Some Americans refuse to admit that mass shootings at school actually happened and no amount of "evidence" will convince them otherwise. Having journalist hover over the grieving like vultures asking the dying to describe how they feel is gross. Filming them while they die is despicable. Journalists might have become accustom to covering health crisis porn in famine and war zones outside of the USA, but inside we have legal protections against being the subjects of this kind of exploitative journalism and we have protections against the dissemination of health information.
- lsiebert 6y agoActually I've seen stories about people being convinced by the nurses taking care of them. There's an example here if you scroll down. https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/nurses-are-dealing-with-patients-who-think-covid-is-a-hoax.html https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/nurses-are-dealing-with-patie... But I'd also argue that such denials are on a spectrum, from people who don't believe in the virus at all, to people who don't believe it's dangerous, to people who think it's only as bad as the flu, to people who don't take wearing masks or other precautions seriously, and even people who believe their youth and existing good health will protect them from harm. This has been exacerbated by both the president and allied media putting out false and misleading information. Countering those false narratives are exactly what good journalists do. The journalists, as always, have to have the consent of the patients they are talking to. That's always been the case. They aren't hovering over anyone without consent, and suggesting otherwise takes agency away from people bravely telling their stories, or who consented to have their last moments documented, or whose family consented to their body being shown. Showing the real effects of disease, violence and death are a powerful element of journalism. Consider Emmet Till's open casket funeral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till Consider George Floyd's last moments. The issue I see is that, because someone entirely different from the filmed individual has a chart at the nurses station, the government has created a regulation claiming you also need their consent despite that not being shown/viewed. That seems like an attempt to obfuscate the truth under the guise of medical privacy, despite no harm being done to anyone.