3 ms·

Two easy ones: COVID coverage from January to March, and Kamala Harris coverage from Democratic Debates to VP nomination. For COVID, back then, it was "tech b

Two easy ones: COVID coverage from January to March, and Kamala Harris coverage from Democratic Debates to VP nomination. For COVID, back then, it was "tech bros are afraid of the flu (and maybe also racist)" and then "go hug a Chinese person", and then "closing flights from Wuhan is racist (even though China itself was doing it domestically)". It was funny to see the escalating tsunami of wrongness coming at the media, but of course, they would never admit wrong-doing. For Kamala Harris, well she was (is?) hugely unpopular. She has terrible political baggage, has been personally responsible for terrible systemic racism, and the news coverage reflected that quite accurately up to a very specific point. Tulsi torpedoed her early on in the debates by bringing all this up. However, when Biden said his VP choice would be a woman of color, there was an immediately 180 in coverage and retroactive editing to make it look like she was an exceptional candidate who has always championed racial issues and is a regular everyday person just like all of us.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
> closing flights from Wuhan is racist (even though China itself was doing it domestically) This is a myth. Wuhan Tianhe International Airport was completely shut down. Domestic and international flights stopped at the same time. Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution falsely claimed that China kept allowing international flights to keep taking off after it stopped domestic flights, and his claim has since gone viral. Even Trump has repeated it several times on national television. The irony is that the airport was shut down so quickly that foreign governments didn't have time to get their citizens out of Wuhan. They had to negotiate with the Chinese government to allow specially chartered evacuation flights to take off from the city. But Niall Ferguson looked at a flight tracker that showed scheduled (not actual) flights, and concluded that international flights were still taking off from Wuhan, and then wrote an Op-Ed about it. The myth has never died, despite repeated debunking.
jayd16 6y ago
Not sure what you're reading but I wouldn't call those wide spread takes from a year ago even if they existed. That said, when you drop out of a race or an election completes, the oppo stops. That's not really a surprising change.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

> closing flights from Wuhan is racist (even though China itself was doing it domestically) This is a myth. Wuhan Tianhe International Airport was completely shut down. Domestic and international flights stopped at the same time. Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution falsely claimed that China kept allowing international flights to keep taking off after it stopped domestic flights, and his claim has since gone viral. Even Trump has repeated it several times on national television. The irony is that the airport was shut down so quickly that foreign governments didn't have time to get their citizens out of Wuhan. They had to negotiate with the Chinese government to allow specially chartered evacuation flights to take off from the city. But Niall Ferguson looked at a flight tracker that showed scheduled (not actual) flights, and concluded that international flights were still taking off from Wuhan, and then wrote an Op-Ed about it. The myth has never died, despite repeated debunking.

jayd16 6y ago

Not sure what you're reading but I wouldn't call those wide spread takes from a year ago even if they existed. That said, when you drop out of a race or an election completes, the oppo stops. That's not really a surprising change.