Yeah, That Could Explain It
Perhaps you’ve noticed a certain news story has been missing in the news for the past few days. I’m talking about the Ebola epidemic and stories about possible cases turning up in the US.
At first, I thought it had simply been displaced by election news. After all, the election was big news. But it’s still missing.
I think I know why now. And I think I was wrong.
Check out the dates on the first of these stories – and then think about when the Ebola stories disappeared (a couple of days before the election, as I recall):
HERE’S Why Ebola Is No Longer In the News
Report: Obama Administration Pressured News
Outlets to Not Report Suspected Ebola Cases
Oh, and it looks like it’s not just the media that’s subscribing to treating the US public like mushrooms:
Md. to stop providing updates on Ebola
investigations, unless cases confirmed
Yeah, that’s REALLY the way to ensure public trust in government – feed the public bullsh!t, then pressure the media to hide the ugly truth. Well, I’ve seen that movie once before – around 1967-1968. I was just a kid at the time, but as I recall it pretty much sucked then. It sucks just as bad now.
Sheesh. What’s next – are we going to see the Surgeon General (or maybe the POTUS) come to a news conference and channel Admiral Felt, yelling at nosy reporters to “Get on the team!”?
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Government Incompetence
Yes we may need a team building event chaired by someone in a leadership. I believe it was Full Metal Jacket…”why don’t you come on over to the winning team and get in for the big W?”
What was it the Nazis used to do in the concentration camps? Play music while people waited to walk into the gas chambers?
Something like that.
To the “good Progressive” tool commenting from Facebook above: there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a news outlet VOLUNTARILY withholding a story based solely on rumor or innuendo. However, when the government starts pressuring the media to withhold stories that are true (e.g., withhold publication of the fact that a hospitalized patient is a suspected case of a deadly disease), that’s a far different story.
For the reason, you might want review the concept of something called a “free press”. I kinda thought you “good Progressives” worshiped at that altar. Or is that only when it suits your purposes?
Hondo, you know the answer to that. Sort of like dissent being all the rage during the war, right up until Obama took over as commander in chief. Then all dissent became RACIST!
I think if the rate of false positives was considerably higher I could see that, but there have literally hundreds -maybe thousands?- of people coming into hospital rooms with fever and thus ‘potentially’ having Ebola,… and yet so far, knock on wood, we haven’t had any cases of transmission outside those two nurses who were treating Mr. Duncan. (Please do correct me if I’m wrong; I’m behind on the news.)
While I certainly don’t think the government should ‘strong arm’ news media, I’m not going to bent out of shape at them suggesting, for reasons of keeping people from panicking over false positives, that only confirmed cases be reported. I mean, that’s just sensible. The press is free to resist that and do as they please, of course.
To put a different spin on this, if the press reported on every shooting incident as a potential case of a military veteran with PTSD going on a rampage before any evidence to point to that came to light, wouldn’t you hope someone could talk some sense into them? And if a private organization like the NRA couldn’t do it, would you really have problems with the government saying, “Hey,.. psst.. that’s not really a common occurrence so since that’s probably not it, how about we look at the facts first.”?
As an aside, your second link -the one that says the administration did this because of the elections, which is pure conjecture- isn’t correct. I typed in the right one and read it, yes. It still sounds incredibly sensible to me to not put forth very scary but very unlikely scenarios without any evidence backing them up.
Your comparison is a tad off, LC. Public reporting of actual cases (facts) going to hospitals for reason X, Y, or Z is nothing like reporting goofy stuff, as they do every day – such as every shooting is somehow already first reported as either PTSD or a Tea Party member with little to no evidence of same. Been going on for quite a while now.
The only thing I have seen lately is a local news story about a nurse who is going to west Africa for a month to treat Ebola patients. She left yesterday I believe. I didn’t see that anyone asked her if she will self quarantine before (or when) she gets back, though many people asked it on the news outlet’s social media pages. It could end up being an early Christmas present to her community.
To Jonathan Cohen’s Facebook comment above:
“In reality, twice as many Americans believe in witches as are afraid of Ebola.”
Phoney argument there. First, witches can’t kill people through a miserable death. Ebola can and does. Your “belief in one thing versus fear in another” is nonsensical.
I don’t know of anyone who fears witches. I know many who fear the potentials of Ebola.
I know many who don’t believe in witches or witchcraft at all. I know no one who doesn’t believe in the REALITY of Ebola. Whether they are afraid of it or not.
The issue is not the reporting or not reporting of news. The free press can choose what they report. However, when the government, for obvious political reasons in this case, pressures the media to report or not report something, that is outside the scope and power of the government. In fact it is when those said pressures to report or not report anything come, that the media’s ears should perk up as a clue to dig deeper. If they are in fact doing their jobs and not just singing along with the Administration.
I do not want to hear or read news of hearsay and innuendo. However I do want to be informed of valid news, proven truthful, be it good or bad to my liking.
So, Jonathan, keep keeping your head in the sand and if you wish hard enough, this whole Ebola problem will just go away. Or you can sing along with Obama as he does yet another rendition of, “Hey America! Don’t Worry…Be Happy!”
Sparks, that brown stuff in Johnathan’s ears is not sand. It’s the natural residue occurring in the place where liberals keep their pointy little heads firmly ensconced.
As someone very wise once said of such people, “If they ever do manage to see the light it will necessarily be in their proctologist’s exam room.”
You’re assuming that this was done for political reasons, as opposed to just being good policy. Reporting on potential Ebola cases would be like reporting on potential gun murders because someone was spotted with a weapon. Call it ‘shooter-like symptoms’, if you wish. Surely doing that would be irresponsible, no? In addition, I think that if the news is over-saturated with hysteria about Ebola ‘fears’ during flu season, it’s just going to be overwhelming to our health systems and cause problems when a real case arises because people will tune out a lot of the alerts.
In short, not publishing these ‘potential cases’ just strikes me as very reasonable.
On the other hand, to say this was done with political reasons -something which I admit is totally within the realm of possibility- you have to show how it aids the administration in that regard. In my opinion, Ebola is viewed as a national issue and is associated with the Obama administration,… but not the Democratic party. I don’t know anyone who, in local elections, thought about what their local D or R was doing about Ebola.
Given the choice between a very reasonable decision to ask news media to cut back on fear-mongering or a calculated ploy of doubtful effectiveness for purely political reasons,.. I’m inclined to opt for this being a reasonable decision.
‘Reporting on potential Ebola cases would be like reporting on potential gun murders because someone was spotted with a weapon. Call it ‘shooter-like symptoms’, if you wish.’
Unless you really do have your head buried deeply in the dunes, you should know by now that people DO frequently call the police to report someone carrying a gun. Not even remotely a good analogy. It invalidates your argument.
And in regard to fear mongering, that does not come from the media, it comes from the general populace. In the swine/bird flu scare in 2006(?), there were more false rumors reported on the internet and debunked per day than any other news. Not once did the government ask the media to stop reporting on that disease.
It’s nice to know that you not only have short-term memory loss – not a good sign for someone so young – but you also choose to ignore what doesn’t fit your argument.
I totally understand your point of view, and to be honest, it does seem to be a good idea, at least on the surface.
However, please read this article about a report from the US National Academy of Sciences in 2005. Didn’t seem to work out too bueno for a bunch of folks.
Now, just imagine the same government response to a viral infection as deadly as this one (the REAL numbers appear to be right at 70% fatality). Couple that with the suppression of the information at the CDC site that you can contract the virus from a counter top, bus chair arm, etc (after someone with the disease sneezes, spits, whatever, this virus apparently is viable outside the body for a while – don’t know how long)), and that the data suggest the Viral Load is just ONE (means that if one virus gets in your blood stream, you have the disease). And THAT, IMO, is the only thing keeping this from turning into a catastrophe of biblical proportions. Simplest defense is to constantly be washing your hands.
Wrt whether this is some more sycophancy on the part of the media, it seems entirely plausible to me, but all we have to go on is the last six years and your mileage clearly differs from ours in that regard.
You appear reasonably intelligent, LC. I find your apparent inability to perceive the fact that the timing here – plus the fact that it removed a major news story where the current Democratic administration was taking a beating in the press and in terms of public opinion – very certainly appears to have been politically motivated here more than a touch disingenious.
Yes, it’s theoretically possible this could have been done for “pure as newly-fallen snow” reasons. Just like it’s theoretically possible Al Capone was scrupulously honest on his Federal taxes and the court that convicted him of tax evasion got it wrong.
Common sense, however, says that neither is plausible.
It does seem that there are several communicable diseases being under reported. Wouldn’t want to say publish something which might slow the flow of illegals from crossing hither and yon. Can’t have an informed public after all.
On the other hand, the press is free to lie and take direction from the gubmint if they voluntarily choose to do so. Not quite what the founders had in mind, but making poor choices is the flipside of that freedom thingy.
^^^ This ^^^
Absolutely!!
It was inevitable. It is one thing to refrain from naming names but it is quite another to cease informing folks about, say, a large or mass monitoring of possible Ebola hosts. The government claims that withholding Ebola-related information is to prevent people from panicking and to reduce anxiety. Really? Well, most people are anxious about the fact that there is no automatic quarantining of people coming here from West Africa. Will the government institute a quarantine to allay those fears? Um, no. Moreover, some of us would rather know where the danger is or we’ll have to assume that it’s in large population centers, especially those with large West African populations or one that is home to the UN. In other words, no Radio City or window shopping at Macys this year, thanks.
A significant part of this is yet another miscalculation by the policy makers. They are misinterpreting our anger as fear.
Big mistake. We saw the results of their error last Tuesday.
“Ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. In the event that during our flight an incident occurs that may or may not cause our deaths, we will not be announcing it. This is in keeping with Acme Airline’s no-panic, no-fear policy. Thank you. And enjoy the flight.”
2/17 Air Cav…”And now for your listening pleasure, the rest of our flight will have “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, piped into every headset and overhead speaker. While our motto use to be, “The Best Airline To Fly”, now it’s “We’re Not Happy…Till You’re Not Happy”. In keeping with the Administration’s new policies regarding the, the, well, that nasty thing we’re not suppose to mention. Thank you again for flying Acme Airlines.”
You can bet your bottom dollar, if this was a Republican Administration trying this shit, the press would not only report it non-stop, they would take the administration to task for suppressing information and infringing on freedom of the press.
These liberal cretin’s are beyond the pale.
Master Gunnery Sergeant retired,
If a Republican administration asks the press to suppress information, it is a scandal. If Democratic administration asks the press to suppress information, it is for the public good and it is a good idea.
Yet another case of how the press views facts as “pliable” or “relative” depending on the situation.
Most of us spend time gathering information from the press and we trust them to a limited degree. In my opinion, it is important to remember that the press has this “pliable” idea about facts – lest we be led astray.
This graphic says it all.
Full-size image at:
http://cdn-media.nationaljournal.com/?controllerName=image&action=get&id=42726
When I look at that picture, I’m reminded of a chest X-ray — It’s all the SPOTS in the picture that are going to cause all the freakin’ trouble.
I can’t miss this opportunity to point out the giant swath of red covering most of California, including my own 50th District. We are not the liberal state that everybody claims.
TOW, unfortunately land doesn’t vote. All of the people live in the blue areas and they do vote. This turns out badly even when (or particularly when) they vote “selfish” instead “for the public good”.
Arizona is a good example of the other side of the picture.
By looking at the map you might assume Arizona is mostly left leaning, and in terms of square miles that may be true, but, land doesn’t vote. The majority of the state’s population (6.6 million) is in Maricopa County (4 million), that big red section in the middle.
Thanks for posting that Hondo. I was looking at it at National Journal this morning and drawing some conclusions that will probably be ignored by the excuse-making liberals.
Compare that map to those from the past and you will see that the coastal enclaves of liberalism are shrinking.
Also, a huge chunk of blue turned red in West Texas this election putting the lie to the Dem belief that they have a lock on the Hispanic vote. Abbott reportedly got 50% of the male Hispanic vote in his Texas governor’s race.
Those two large areas in New Mexico and Arizona are due to a high number of coastal liberal elites in northern New Mexico and an Indian population in Arizona that is totally dependent on the feds for its survival. Tucson also has a large liberal contingent. Last time I was there, a couple of years ago, I was amazed at the number of New Yorker’s and other northeasterner’s I encountered.
That same phenomenon largely accounts for the blue areas of coastal Florida. That big blue chunk of the Florida panhandle is usually red but I believe it was lost this time by that dipshit Republican congressman affiliated with those notorious phony federal contractors exposed here at TAH. The other large (but shrinking) blue areas in the South represent areas with black majorities.
That leaves Minnesota as the largest outlier which is no doubt due to their long affiliation with progressivism.
Well, MN is largest area-wise, PT. But probably not in population. Methinks you’re overlooking the “Lost-In-Libland-and-Possibly-Beyond-Help NE Quadrangle” of MA/VT/CT/RI.
Hondo…As you’ll notice, as usual, the liberal, leftist coast, soft under belly of my Northwest state was, is and will always be, blue. They are some green thinking, wind energy loving, give it all away, Starbucks drinking folks there. They are no different from the “yellow dog” Democrats I grew up with in the South.
But…NO windmills in there part of the state mind you. No way. They wouldn’t want to disrupt their lovely scenery.
Looking at the Mitten state, I knew I could count on the metro Detroit area and Flint, Saginaw and Bay City to vote Prog. What amazes me is that the UP is red.
Damn phone. Meant to add, I think we can thank Bart Stupak for the UP turning red.
Don’t you just want to see one of them come down with something really nasty, but it goes unreported in the press until he’s dead?
Oh, I’m SO sorry – that was SO mean of me!
Let’s see: we have our choice of things… dengue fever… enterovirus… ebola Zaire….
Oh, and let’s remember that whooping cough is going aroudn again, along with measles, mumps and a couple of others, because someone in La-La-Land decided that her kid was autistic because he got immunization shots for school… when in fact, the latest research shows that it has to do with something that happens while the embryo is in gestation. Oooopss!
It’s the lack of responsibility that floors me (not about autism). The refusal to accept any responsiblity for doing something stupid and then trying to hide it, and blaming other people when your something stupid becomes a crisis is what 2-year-olds do.
When has this administration, or anyone connected to it, ever taken any responsibility for anything? EVER?
Ex-PH2…Do not feel bad. You are not alone dear sister. I have had those thoughts go through my mind as well. I often imagined that if just one person in the White House, anyone, was found positive for Ebola, how long it would take for Obama and family to be on vacation for the rest of his term and the White House sealed. As well as new, stringent national policies in place for Ebola.
Well, sealed, except for the public tours and fence jumpers of course.
No, I do not wish this on anyone, I truly don’t. But it seems sometimes, there are just some people who WILL NOT SEE the truth, by choice, until it knocks them down!
Ex,
In the olden days before some of you were born, Dengue didn’t kill you, you became weak and could not sit up for 10 days.
At one time, dengue was evaluated as a bio-weapon. The model: everybody in the target country gets it, nobody dies but they cannot resist, the occupiers take over the country, when the population gets better they don’t run the country any more.
Problem with that scenario is same with all bioweapons – you cannot infect your target without also infecting the place where it came from. Bioweapon use is suicide and the first victim is really pissed off about it when they get better.
Yeah, well, Richard, this ain’t them there olden times any more. Dengue fever can be debilitating now. And the enterovirus D-68 has an alarming tendency to produce polio-like side effects (look those up) in its rampage through the human body.
Pertussis/whooping cough might not kill you, but it will make your life a living hell and it hits everyone, not just children. Measles in kids becomes a rash and a fever. In adults, it can be fatal. And mumps in an adult male will make you sterile. And if you haven’t seen the effects of tetanus on an unvaccinated individual, you should, because it will scare the living shit out of you.
Oh, yeah – on a side note, polio has NOT been wiped out. And you really don’t want your kids hit with that. It also hits adults.
Just got a Facebook pop up at the top to donate to help fight Ebola. Really? Donate to what and for what? It’s some strange outfit the likes of “Ebola Are Us” or some such. If I want to donate to help fight Ebola I’ll do it through a legitimate, well researched charity.
There is a difference between fear and caution / common sense.
Do people lock their front doors out of fear or common sense?
Is there not a good reason to be cautious or concerned about ebola?
Consider this from NBC New York:
The number of people under “active monitoring” for Ebola symptoms has increased from 117 on Monday to 357 people Wednesday, health officials said.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/active-monitoring-ebola-doctor-Craig-Spencer-bellevue-hospital-281671121.html
I don’t know about any of you, but I am not fearful of ebola, but I am cautiously concerned about it within the US.
I didn’t know this, but here is a link to an article that I saw in the side bar at washingtonsblog (your first link).
The author is right, we’ve seen this movie before, and it killed a crap load of people.
What the media in my area are doing is reporting on whatever is available about ebola to report. Period.
And one of the things they are telling us is to get your flu shot now, because ebola’s early symptoms match those of the flu. So, logically, if you’ve had your flu shot, and you’re sick with some flu-like symptoms, it could be something worse… like food poisoning. 😉