Erick Erickson just can’t help seeing everything through his prism of politics and mainstream media hatred, can he? From his post, “Some Self-Reflection, Please“:
On CNN in May, Bill Nye announced it’d be at least two years before there was a vaccine for COVID-19. He was not alone on that network with similar pronouncements.
On MSNBC, around the same time, Dr. Irwin Redlener said it would be “impossible” to get a safe vaccine by the end of the year. Tim O’Brien at Bloomberg, in August, claimed people within the Trump Administration denied a vaccine would come this year. He said it was, “Amazingly irresponsible for Trump to be touting this in the midst of this crisis.”
Also in August, NBC News ran this fact check claiming, “Experts say the development, testing, and production of a COVID-19 vaccine for the public is still months away, and it would take a medical miracle for one to be available this year, much less before Election Day.” It was heavily recirculated.
In October, NPR ran a “fact check” stating, “None of the large trials have been completed. Top health officials say a vaccine likely won’t be widely available until mid-2021.”
Yet …
Now the very same media that said it was impossible is giving live coverage to people getting the vaccine they said was impossible and also ridiculing those who are skeptical of a vaccine coming so fast. Pay no attention to the doctor on MSNBC who said if one came this year it would be unsafe to take.
Where is the self-reflection from the media?
They got it wrong.
No. Erickson needs to read what he himself just wrote: The doctor.
The doctor.
The expert.
Not the media.
All the media can do, unless they have a journalist with other areas of expertise – not unknown, of course – is report the expert opinion of the experts, after suitable cross-referencing and fact checks (like, Are they an expert or is it just Dr. Scott Atlas?). And the experts form their expertise based on their experience in R&D and studying history. They can make predictions, based on that knowledge, but it’ll necessarily be biased by that historical knowledge.
Blaming the journalists for not getting it right is rather like trusting anti-vaxxers to get it right, if I can cross my wires slightly. Oh, here’s a better one: It’s blaming the messenger for the message.
Pile on top of that the fact we’re two weeks short of the New Year, which means all of the end of the year predictions were two weeks off over an 10-11 month period, and I find Erickson’s message hard to take seriously. Then he piles this on:
When President Trump moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem, commentators from CNN to MSNBC to the New York Times expressed concern that it would start a war. Instead, Israel now has diplomatic relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Sudan, and more — but not just diplomatic relations. They have trade relations and business relations now too. Only six months ago, textbooks in those countries were still tearing out pages that referred to Israel.
It’s the mark of the partisan amateur to judge foreign affairs accomplishments such as these within months – or days! – of their announcements. Morocco, as I’ve not mentioned, has infuriated elements of the GOP Senate for the apparent quid pro quo of recognizing a Moroccan land grab as legitimate. I’ve expressed concerns about the UAE deal here. The Sudan deal? That they became a secular nation prior to the deal makes the entire achievement less than it seems.
We may have bribed the nations in question to normalize relations, and in some cases they may go back on their word the next time Israel outrages them. (Notice I very carefully phrased that remark on purpose.) How will that hypothetical play into Erickson’s punditry if it does, indeed, materialize? This may be a case in which the “partisan media” has a better understanding of the subject than does Trump, Kushner, and Pompeo, themselves amateurs in a party that embraces amateurism and disdains expertise.
But, for Erickson, all he can see is a media that dislikes an ideology that has given rise to people that Erickson himself doesn’t like.
Self-reflection much?
