The year of the pandemic was the best thing to happen to cable news – a captive audience stuck at home with a reason to tune in regularly. They really hate to see it end. CNN’s ratings have cratered even greater than their credibility, which didn’t seem humanly possible considering they employ Chris Cuomo. The other networks and print outlets haven’t suffered the same fate, at least not yet. But whatever media emerges from this year of failure, mis- and disinformation should be viewed with the same skepticism and contempt CNN rightly finds itself in the center of.
Everyone got something wrong in the last year, just as everyone gets something wrong every year. We’re human, screwing up and getting things wrong is what we do. But we’re different from the animals because we can learn from those mistakes. We’re supposed to, it’s a key part of growing up.
Yet, the media not only doesn’t appear to have learned anything from the past year, they’ve doubled down on their failures. The soothsayers they employ predicted pretty much every possible outcome, at one point or another. That’s a lot of things, but it’s not news or even insight. It’s the equivalent of putting a dollar on every number on a roulette table – sure, you’ll “win” and be able to brag about your winning streak, but you’ll lose money each time.
Anyone with an MD was on TV talking like they knew what they were saying, like they were an “expert.” They weren’t, and some weren’t even close. And so were people without MDs.
In fairness, it’s hard to be an expert on something no one knows anything about, and when this started no one knew anyone about COVID-19, it was brand new. That never stopped any TV doctor or paid contributor from speaking like they’d just published THE paper on the subject. It’s not their fault, ultimately, it’s the fault of the news outlets. If you’re reached for a quote by a newspaper or asked to go on cable TV to discuss a story, it’s the kiss of death to say, “I honestly have no idea, and no one does,” even when it’s true. You won’t be quoted again, and you’ll never get back on TV. And being a media doctor/pundit is the pathway to a lot of money.
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Even local TV stations couldn’t escape screwing up. I remember watching one local station interviewing a doctor at the start of the pandemic who, it turns out, was a dermatologist but the audience wasn’t told this. I know this because I looked her up – she was someone I’d never heard of and wasn’t really saying anything I couldn’t have said if I’d read a couple AP articles. She was fine, said pretty much what everyone else was saying at the time, but still…
But that’s what the “news” business has become – people who have zero firsthand knowledge of a story/bill/law/situation/pandemic speaking as though they are the authority on the subject.
Cable news, in particular, is bad. Each network has about 12 people they talk to about everything. I know many of those people, they aren’t experts. They can string together a coherent sentence for a 5 minute “debate” on any subject with about 10 minutes to prepare, but nothing about their thoughts is newsworthy. If they didn’t call themselves “news” networks, I wouldn’t have a problem with it, and if the country hadn’t been pushed into a panic it wouldn’t much matter.
At a time when we needed level heads and factual information, the media delivered bomb-throwers and partisan hacks. To this day, it is not rare to tune into a cable news show to see one host interviewing another host or panel of hosts and employees of whatever network. That’s not news, that’s a conversation you’d ask to be moved away from if it were happening in a restaurant at the table next to you.
But it sells, and that’s all that matters. I asked one of these hosts why they had someone on multiple times per week to talk about subjects they knew very little about and was told, bluntly, the audience loves them. There is no news value in that, no one learns anything when Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon banter between their shows, but then there’s no news value in talking to anyone they talk to when they aren’t directly involved in the story. It’s just someone with an opinion talking to someone else with an opinion. The “experts,” insofar as they exist, aren’t experts in anything but BSing.
Sadly, there’s not much we can do about it. It sells. Even CNN is making money, mostly because of the screwed-up way ad buyers value their small audience more highly than larger audiences. So don’t expect anything to change because there’s enough money either way.
In the meantime, “experts” will continue to get everything wrong with no repercussions and audiences seeking information will go away with a belly full of empty calories and very little, if anything, useful in their heads. Who would’ve thought “experts” could do so much damage in the name of “news”?
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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