Professional researcher and writer on health and science issues for more than 30 years, and Pratt on Texas listener, Sandy wrote about the current big scare in Lubbock over COVID: “As of Saturday, there were 299 empty hospital beds, including ICU, in the entire Lubbock area (called Trauma Service Area B). That’s 3 dozen more empty beds than just last Wednesday when the medical tents first made the news. The public is being led to believe the hospitals are overflowing and need emergency tents because the pandemic has again reached a crisis.”
Sandy says we observant citizens should “call foul” and note that most local media is complicit in “perpetual scaremongering.”
That will sound overly strong to some but I’ve watched very carefully from the beginning of the grand WuFlu panic and it is a quite fair allegation of our local media, and not just that of the Lubbock market about which she writes.
In daily, weekly, and event driven special coverage it has been extraordinarily rare to have reporters for print, television, or radio ask informed, tough questions which have answers that provide context, not just important, but necessary context for the public to make truly informed decisions about COVID and government and medical response to such.
A perfect example across all media in Texas is case numbers. Last week headlines screamed “Texas hits 1 million COVID cases” and “Texas becomes first state to top 1 million coronavirus cases.” Hundreds of press outlets reported such panic inducing headlines when in reality Texas Dept. of State Health Services reported Sunday that Texas has only has 135,912 active COVID-19 cases, less than half of one-percent of the Texas population.
National, state, and local media are complicit in creating massive economic and personal damage by being either too lazy or too agenda driven to report virus information in proper context. That might please Leftist or ignorant reporters but the jig will be up when they have no jobs because their reporting put all their news organizations’ advertisers (or donors) out of business.
Update: Del Rio News-Herald ceases publication, blames virus cutback – the losses are due to lockdowns and orders that curtailed business with advertisers.
Totally agree with this article. People are letting their thoughts and actions be controlled by the media. The media is supposed to REPORT news, but for many years they have been creating the news.
Thanks Robert for the great article. Appreciate your in depth research your straight-forward reporting.
From the Columbia Journalism Review. “Journalism’s Gates keepers”
“I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. Recipients included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.”
https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php
With “Influence Peddling” so obvious as this it’s best to NOT even watch the news.
This is 100% true. Mark my word, not one single patient will be housed in those tents! They might use it as a holding area for discharged covid patients waiting for a ride but that’s it! It’s all for show!
Yesterday, Lubbock news reported that we’re out of hospital beds and that 18 patients were waiting for beds that are unavailable. But, the Texas DSHS shows that officially, there are 290 empty hospital beds and 17 empty ICU beds in TSA Area B (Lubbock area).
Something very wrong is going on. We are clearly not being given the complete and honest story. I wonder if they are referring only to the number of beds they’ve set aside for covid patients (at higher reimbursement rates) and are falsely claiming to an unsuspecting public that these are the same as their total hospital bed capacity? That would be my guess.
And that is only part of the scare story. Testing every patient for covid using those pcr tests does not equate to patients actually admitted for, or sick with, the virus. We are talking about a virus with an IFR of 0.3-0.4%. The scares do not compute.
It is shameful that our local medical facilities are giving the public the message that they are incapable of handing a seasonal virus. The public deserves to trust the medical professionals caring for them, and this sure isn’t the way to build trust.