The first allusion to media and death that I remember was Neil Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves To Death. Postman’s thesis was that:
TV is turning all public life (education, religion, politics, journalism) into entertainment; how the image is undermining other forms of communication, particularly the written word; and how our bottomless appetite for TV will make content so abundantly available, context be damned, that we’ll be overwhelmed by “information glut” until what is truly meaningful is lost and we no longer care what we’ve lost as long as we’re being amused.
Postman’s idea was that TV was killing our culture. On Friday, July 16, when President Joe Biden was asked by an NBC reporter what his message was to social media platforms, particularly Facebook, Biden replied, “They’re killing people,” then added, “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”
Even though Biden backed off a little a few days later after Facebook complained and laid out all the things they were doing to promote vaccination, the President was essentially right. In fact, he should have included Fox News in his condemnation.
In an article titled “Facebook, Fox, and what ‘killing people’ means in a pandemic” in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Jon Allsop wrote:
Biden’s intervention—along with rising cases and plummeting vaccination rates—have reignited urgent media conversations about vaccine hesitancy, whose fault it is, and to what extent. Facebook has been central to this conversation, with observers debating the proper balance between the good messaging it has instigated and the bad messaging it has allowed on its platform. Right-wing media outlets—and, given its huge reach, Fox News, in particular—have also been central, with some commentators arguing that they deserve a greater share of the blame for sowing mistrust of the vaccines and Biden’s efforts to distribute them. (“Who’s winning the war between Biden and Facebook?” a headline in Wired asked. “Fox News.”) On Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Murthy [Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general] whether Fox is also “killing people”; Murthy replied that the general cost of misinformation “can be measured in lives lost,” but declined to be more specific. Oliver Darcy, a CNN media reporter, called this a “dodge” that reflected poorly on the administration’s priorities: “misinformation on Fox is distributed intentionally, while Facebook is at least putting some effort to combatting it.”
With the increase in COVID infections and deaths due to the Delta variant, there really is a pandemic among the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are killing not only themselves but others as well. It seems they would rather die than admit they were wrong about believing in science and getting vaccinated.
Some entertainers on Fox News seem to be developing a little conscience and adjusting their moral compass slightly. Jon Allsop in CJR reports:
Many media observers have this week noticed an apparent shift in Fox’s coverage of COVID vaccines. On Monday, the network ran on-screen banners advertising official vaccine resources, and Sean Hannity urged his viewers to take the pandemic seriously; on Tuesday, Steve Doocy, of Fox & Friends, said that the vaccine “will save your life.” These efforts have met, in more liberal quarters, with relief, and even some praise. It’s not clear, however, that they really represent any sea change. Hannity and Doocy have both endorsed vaccines before; in February, the latter appeared, alongside several other Fox hosts, in a vaccine PSA. And, more pertinently, hosts who have consistently cast doubt on the vaccines have continued to do so: following Hannity on Monday, for instance, Laura Ingraham accused Democrats of trying to cancel “inconvenient opinions regarding their Covid response,” and brought on a guest who called the idea that there is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” a “lie.” Some of this week’s Fox-has-changed commentary reminded me of the post-election period, when supposed instances of hosts turning on Trump belied a more sordid reality. With vaccines, as with Trump’s election lies, low expectations can dilute our standards of accountability.
So, some entertainers on Fox News seem to be accountable, but not all of them. Facebook? No. Facebook is still defensive and will not take down vaccination disinformation. If some people would rather die than believe in science, Facebook would rather make more money than be accountable by removing vaccination lies that are killing people.
In 1985 Neil Postman was right: in the media, people are amusing themselves to death, and some of the media could care less. Money before morality.
