THREAD

The Year’s Worst Media Moments: 2020 Edition

Below is a top 10 of common media takes & narratives that aged, well, imperfectly.

Starting w/ #10: remember when Trump was going to use the Post Office to steal the election? @JoyAnnReid, @VICE, @ajplus & @ananavarro do.

#9: Early COVID coverage

I tried to cut some slack on early coronavirus predictions. But it’s worth reflecting on the way we talked about the virus back when it first started & how many people were so confidently wrong, like @Slate, @USATODAY, @thehill & @businessinsider.

#8: Masks

The worst specific coverage around the early outbreak was on masks.
Especially because the pro-mask crowd can be so militant these days, it’s worth remembering what the conversation looked like back then.

Some of the worst were @CNN, @MSNBC, @ABC & @washingtonpost.

#7: A rushed vaccine

Prior to the election, we were told that Trump would rush out a potential COVID vaccine. That didn’t happen, and now the media won’t even give credit to the Trump Admin for the vaccine. Here’s: @VanityFair, @BuzzFeedNews, @jonathanchait & @ForeignPolicy.

#6: War with Iran

Speaking of things we were promised, by now we should be months into war with Iran, to hear @ForeignPolicy, @AP, @CNN, and @Reuters tell it (among MANY others).

That a potential war doesn’t even crack the top 5 is a testament to the year we’ve had.

#5: No vaccine in 2020

There have been millions of coronavirus vaccines distributed as the year ends. We were promised this simply wasn’t possible before the election.

Here’s a smattering of examples from @Yamiche, @NPR (fact checks, man), @abcnews and @NBCNews.

Honorable Mention: whatever this was from @BillKristol.

Still trying to sort through this one, but I couldn’t leave it out, especially after he doubled down on it today.

No Insurrection Act yet, anyway.

#4: Defending China

While there may be some deserved slack for the early coverage of coronavirus in general, there’s no excuse for parroting Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

But that’s exactly what @NewYorker, @qz, @CNN and @YahooNews (wtf with this headline??) did.

#3 Hunter’s laptop

While much of the Russia story was prior to 2020, we got one notable entry: the idea, absent evidence, that Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation & not to be reported on. The news blew up weeks later.

@NPR, @MSNBC, @CNN & @JoyAnnReid.

#2: “Mostly peaceful” protests

In the last few months, America saw its most violent & destructive riots in decades. Despite this, the media insisted that these were “mostly peaceful” protests.

This gets bonus points for ubiquity, including: @ABC, @USATODAY, @CBSNews & @Reuters.

And, finally, at #1: Hydroxychloroquine

This remains the weirdest, and surely most shameful, Orange Man Bad news cycle, where the media wrote off a promising treatment for a global pandemic simply because Trump liked it. Featuring @CNN, @brianstelter, @MSNBC and @Yamiche.

It can be easy, in a 24/7 news environment, to forget what previous predictions and ideas were common. But I think it’s worth reflecting on, particularly since these same people are still making predictions and driving the conversation around innumerable other important issues.

So perhaps in 2021 our collective New Years resolution can be to slow down, see our political opponents as three-dimensional and not mere strawmen, and recognize that there is much that we simply don’t know.

And maybe bite our tongue, once in a while, as a result.

Even if we all can’t muster this, it’s absolutely imperative that the national media does, if they want to have any hope of regaining the credibility that they’ve spent much of this past year lighting on fire through these and other news cycles.