Journalists Lambaste the Spread of Misinformation

CARL CAMERON, FORMER CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Well, look. I mean, let’s be realistic. Questioning or worse, contradicting science in a case like this is horrifying and the media can be complicit when they’re trafficking with what Trump calls his hunches. Fox has done that, for sure. Some religious leaders are also acting as though that it’s not a big deal and they’re putting their congregations at risk. This is not something to be played with lightly. Trump’s allies on Fox and a lot of other conservative platforms are literally putting their audiences in mortal danger. So, the longer this pandemic is prolonged, ignoring safety is every bit more dangerous. And people are talking about maybe we are getting closer to peaks, maybe we are not, maybe it is a couple more weeks, maybe it’s a couple of more months. Until such time as the scientists revise what were their original prognostications saying, if we don’t get it right, it’s going to be hard to flatten the curve. Wishful thinking is very, very dangerous and the media has to be more attentive to what scientists are saying and not saying and really let the politicians aside. They need to shut up and let science come first.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, to that end, Kara, before I turn to you, I want to play this mash-up from Fox which basically shows what they’ve been saying about this until it really became serious and deaths started to mount up in the United States. This is what was produced by “The Daily Show.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH: This is one of those cases where the more I learn about coronavirus the less concerned I am. There’s a lot of hyperbole.

LOU DOBBS: The national left-wing media playing up fears of the coronavirus.

TOMI LAHREN: The sky is falling because we have a few dozen cases of coronavirus on a cruise ship? I am far more concerned with stepping on a used heroin needle than getting the coronavirus, but maybe that’s just me.

JEANINE PIRRO: It is a virus like the flu. All the talk of coronavirus being so much more deadly doesn’t reflect reality.

DR. MARC SIEGEL: This virus should be compared to the flu because at worst, at worst, worst-case scenario could be the flu.

GERALDO RIVERA: The far more deadly, more lethal threat is not the coronavirus, it’s the ordinary old flu.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Yikes, yikes, yikes, Kara. I mean, it is actually hard to watch that given what we know about this. So, just give me your, you know, impression of that and in light of the fact that you sort of kind of went to war, sort of, with Fox News with an op-ed in “the New York times” entitled that it was scaring your mother or risking your mother’s life. Tell me about it.

KARA SWISHER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, RECODE: It was about my mom’s experience with it. At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, right, and I’m — I read a lot of science stuff so I was kind of aware of it more so than most people. And so, my mom — I was worried about it more and more, and my mom calling me and saying things like, it is just the flu. Those — everything that was said right there. It was really amazing. It’s a Democratic plot. There’s nothing to worry about. You can go out. You don’t need to social distance. It’s only — it is going to pass over in the warm weather. She had all this kind of ridiculousness.