ABC News claimed that last week, the United States suffered its highest number of coronavirus-related deaths in a single day.
The only problem? It’s not true, according to ABC News itself. Other than that, though, the story checks out!
“US reports highest single-day of COVID-19 deaths,” declares the network’s headline, citing Aug. 12 data.
“The United States is reporting the highest number of deaths in a single day — nearly 1,500,” said anchor Diane Macedo. “CDC Director Robert Redfield says everyone in America needs to wear a mask, or this coming fall could be, quote, ‘the worst we’ve ever had.’”
ABC News’s claim appeared not just on its news website. It appeared also on Good Morning America, MSN.com, and elsewhere, as noted by Reason’s Nick Gillespie.
There is just a small problem with the network’s story. It is not true.
As Macedo spoke, an accurate on-air graphic appeared, making the exact opposite point of her shocking claim.
“The graphic at least points out an important qualifier: The 1,490 deaths represent the deadliest day ‘since mid-May,’” Gillespie explains. “In fact, according to The New York Times’ count, the seven-day rolling average number of deaths in April was double what the current numbers are. If you look at the graphic, you can see that peak deaths plainly occurred months ago.”
He adds, “But such attention to such an enormously important detail goes completely missing in the ABC segment, and a less-than-attentive viewer could be forgiven for thinking that the country was in fact experiencing record-setting COVID-19 deaths right now.”
The ABC News screw-up speaks to a much bigger and more serious issue, which is that the press’s handling of the deadly pandemic has been misleading and downright deceptive practically from the get-go.
Gillespie says it well when he writes, “The COVID-19 story is a tough one, with new information emerging all the time. But the media, never infallible in the first place, seem increasingly prone to running stories that are not even internally consistent but instead are a hodgepodge of anxiety and apocalypticism.”
At some point, one needs to ask whether it is mere ignorance or maliciousness that has made it possible for so many faulty and outright misleading coronavirus news reports. At some point, you need to start drawing trend lines.
On May 26, ABC News published a report titled, “Who is spreading COVID-19 misinformation and why.”
Curiously, the story does not name ABC News as a culprit.
