Tipsheet

Seattle NPR-Affiliated Station Announces They Won't Be Airing Trump's Coronavirus Press Briefings

KUOW Public Radio, which provides news for the Seattle and Tacoma area, announced on Tuesday they will no longer be airing President Trump's daily coronavirus task force press conference.

The station said they will be keeping track of what is being said, but "we will not be airing the briefings live due to a pattern of false or misleading information provided that cannot be fact checked in real time."

Trump's critics within the media have been now calling for news outlets to stop airing the press conferences live because of misinformation.

"The media must stop live-broadcasting Trump’s dangerous, destructive coronavirus briefings," was the headline for Margret Sullivan's column for the Washington Post.

Many detractors used the recent example of Trump touting Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin, which are normally used to treat malaria, as a way to help those afflicted with the Wuhan coronavirus despite it not being approved by the Food and Drug Administration to be used for COVID-19 at the time. 

Since then, however, Hydroxychloroquine is being used to treat coronavirus patients in hard hit states, like New York, as there have been some success stories with using the drugs.

Critics also take offense to Trump continuing to criticize the media during the briefings in the middle of a global pandemic.