I don’t know about you, but given the current COVID-19 pandemic, I’d think twice before going to a barber shop or sitting in a crowded movie theater, at least until cases die down. Federal guidelines mandate that a state should only reopen when the amount of new cases has steadily decreased from two weeks prior. The guidelines are not mandatory, as the Trump Administration left the decision to reopen mostly up to governors. And for some of them, waiting longer to get back to the way things were just isn’t worth it.
The majority of states that have reopened thus far do not meet federal guidelines for doing so. Considering that the majority of states in the US have reopened in some capacity, that’s a huge risk for many Americans. Out of 30 states that have reopened in some capacity, only 9 actually met the federal guidelines. With testing shortages rampant, it’s hard to accurately measure the true damage this could cause, but most experts say that reopening too soon could cause much more harm than good.
A Partisan Divide on Social Distancing
Amidst the peeling back of stay-at-home orders came the heavily covered protests to these orders. Led mostly by Trump supporters and conservatives, they’ve turned social distancing into a partisan issue.
On the left are proponents of social distancing, who criticize states like Georgia and Florida for reopening too early and criticize the protestors for endangering themselves and others. On the right are people like the protestors, who think that the social distancing “craze” has been taken too far. And with both of these stances come media outlets that support them.
Liberal and Conservative media sources report on state reopenings in the pandemic completely differently. To demonstrate this point, I’ll be using Breitbart news, which AllSides rates as heavily biased to the right, and Huffington Post, which they rate as heavily biased to the left. As a “control group,” I’ll be using Associated Press, which is rated as not having bias.
Breitbart vs. HuffPost: California Beaches
Michael Heiman, Getty Images. This photo was taken in Newport Beach, CA, on April 25, 2020.
Take, for example, this story about Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom ordering Orange County’s beaches to close and the backlash caused by it. The AP spends a considerable amount of the article playing both sides, saying that Republicans feel the ban is targeted towards Orange County because it leans Republican, while liberals praise the governor for maintaining public lockdown guidelines. It also explains that the governor singled Orange County out because while most other California counties closed without being asked, Orange decided to remain open.
HuffPost jumps to the Democratic governor’s defense before the article even begins. In a subheading underneath the headline, they explain that Orange County’s beaches were open, and that’s why he closed them. Quotes from their article are pulled heavily from Newsom and other Democrats, reiterating the previous information that other counties had already closed.
Breitbart, on the other hand, took on a much more critical tone. Joel Pollak, the author, talks of California beachgoers “seeking relief” from quarantine and Newsom “scolding” them for doing so. He even put the phrase “social distancing” in quotes, which serves to invalidate it as a concept. At the end of the article, Breitbart cites its own coverage on how heat and sunlight supposedly makes the virus less easy to transmit, a claim that has little to no scientific validity despite President Trump’s support of it. Mention of Orange County’s failure to close when all other counties already had came at the end of the article. Clearly, each source has an agenda to push, unlike the AP, whose coverage is far fairer. Both articles prioritized certain facts and pushed others to the fringes, emphasizing the side they agree with. Readers of each publication are likely coming to them to hear their own opinions reflected back, and each source is providing that perfectly, but at the cost of a more balanced, and thus factual, story.
Kemp’s Reopening in the Media
Another example of just how different each outlet can spin the exact same set of facts is in their treatment of Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp, who infamously reopened his state much earlier than scientists recommended. HuffPost’s article’s bias is immediately apparent in its headline: “Georgia Gov. Shows Just How Far Behind The World He Is On Coronavirus”. The article continues to slam Kemp, and while they cite sources like the CDC, their negative emotion towards the governor is tangible in the writing.
Breitbart instead solely reported on what Kemp had to say about his own policies. There was no reporting on the potential downsides of reopening Georgia, even to refute them.
Obviously, almost any issue can be turned into a partisan one, and with that comes media bias that affects how everyone sees issues differently. But the politicization of coronavirus shouldn’t be taken lightly. With state reopenings, lives are at stake, and the most reliable sources tell us we really don’t have enough information to know whether or not that’s safe. Until that point, Americans should be wary of any news article telling them it’s safe to resume life as it was before, or passing judgment onto a governor before the full story is known.
Emphasizing certain facts and downplaying others is not much better than leaving certain information out altogether, as it paints a skewed picture of the situation occurring, and people’s actions can easily be affected by that. To get closest to the truth, all sides must be considered equally.
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