Coronavirus Vs Ebola: A Contrast in Fox News’ Coverage of the News

A head­line sto­ry from Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca about Fox News’ cov­er­age of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic com­pared with cov­er­age of the Ebo­la epi­dem­ic in 2014

Fox News has been mis­in­form­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic for decades. The U.S. TV audi­ence is very much vul­ner­a­ble and sus­cep­ti­ble to the lies which Fox News puts out. This is why Fox remains a rat­ing bonan­za. Their hypocrisy in the cov­er­age of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic com­pared to the cov­er­age of the Ebo­la epi­dem­ic is mind bugling.

Even more, mis­in­for­ma­tion from FOX News about the impact of the virus con­tributed to mak­ing things worse. If you have not noticed, one of the anchors on the Fox News chan­nel, Trish Regan, was recent­ly put on the bench because she mis­in­formed the pub­lic about what was tak­ing place regard­ing the coro­n­avirus. This is the truth!

Plen­ty of orga­ni­za­tions have spent time look­ing at how the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic or COVID-19 is being report­ed and there is plen­ty of blame going around.

Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca, for exam­ple, places blame on the lax response which came from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion con­cern­ing the spread of the virus to mis­in­for­ma­tion that Fox News pro­vid­ed the pub­lic. The orga­ni­za­tion says, “Fox News’ ter­ri­ble coro­n­avirus cov­er­age put its view­ers and the pub­lic at risk.”

Of course — Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca seems like they are in con­stant war­fare with the Fox News organization.

On Fox News’ cov­er­age of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic com­pared with cov­er­age of the 2014 Ebo­la epi­dem­ic, they say “Fox News fig­ures pushed hard on the idea that Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion was inept at respond­ing to a poten­tial pan­dem­ic.” And then Media Mat­ters pro­vide what it says is the evi­dence of these actions, a video nar­ra­tive, with the footage they gath­ered show­ing anchors from the Fox News chan­nel push­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion hard about their han­dling of Ebo­la in 2014.

While Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca is evi­dent­ly a lib­er­al or left-lean­ing non-prof­it enti­ty, Fox News on the oth­er hand is also evi­dent­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, with a right-lean­ing jour­nal­is­tic bent.

Mean­while, there are plen­ty of oth­ers, nei­ther left-lean­ing nor right-lean­ing, at least in my opin­ion, and who appear non-par­ti­san in the approach to cov­er­age, all of whom have con­demned the kind of cov­er­age that Fox News pro­vid­ed when the pan­dem­ic began to gain a foothold in the Unit­ed States.

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Clip­pings from the inter­net show­ing how news orga­ni­za­tions’ report­ing about Fox News and its cov­er­age of the coronavirus.