Two big and dramatic developments, the coronavirus and stock market plunge, are dominating the news. To understand these events and their true significance, you need to understand the political and journalistic prisms through which these events are being reported and assessed.
First, the media have a professional interest in hyping the threat from the coronavirus and exaggerating the dangers from the stock market plunge. Doing so draws in readership and viewership.
Staid and boring news, after all. doesn’t sell; dramatic and consequential news does. This doesn’t mean the coronavirus and stock market plunge aren’t significant events; they obviously are. But it does mean that they need to be put into perspective and viewed in historical context.
Second, we live in hyper-polarized times, politically, and are in the midst of a fiercely contested presidential election, with one-third of the Senate and all of the House of Representatives up for reelection.
This means that political candidates running and on the ballot have every incentive to seize upon whatever bad news they can to try and score political points against their opponents.
Thus much of the alarmist commentary that we’re hearing about the coronavirus and stock market plunge is attributable to politicians trying to win votes and media outlets trying to draw in readers and viewers.
That many journalists and media outlets are politically partisan and unabashedly anti-Trump further compounds this problem.
So, consider the source of your news and take in information with a skeptical eye. Things probably aren’t as bad as they seem. As Ecclesiastes 1:9 puts it, there is nothing new under the sun and we’ve most likely been here before. Do your own fair-minded reporting and analysis.
We’ll have more to say about the coronavirus and the stock market plunge. For now, it’s important to understand the interests and incentives of those who are reporting on these developments (the media), as well as those who are helping to drive media coverage (the politicians): because as Agent Scully put it in the X-Files: “The truth is out there. But so are lies.”
Feature photo credit: Medium.