The Republicans are plaguing our country with asymmetric lying, CNN’s Brian Stelter said. Apparently, they are also the only people who challenge the letter of coronavirus health guidelines.
Or maybe not.
CNN reporters and commentators were very worried this week when they saw people participating in the Republican National Convention without masks. Jim Acosta, the network’s White House correspondent, tweeted on Thursday, “Very little social distancing. Very few masks in sight on the south lawn of the WH for Trump’s speech.”
“Few masks, close seating as audience arrives at White House,” read a CNN chyron.
A tale of two chyrons. CNN is such a joke. pic.twitter.com/r5ixbKhhBk
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) August 28, 2020
During first lady Melania Trump’s speech on Tuesday, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said, “But just imagine, in that Rose Garden, all those people sitting there relatively close together, if they would have been wearing a face mask, all of them, the powerful message that would have sent to the American people that face masks save lives at a delicate moment like this.”
The CNN crew’s level of concern about what kind of message a group gives off as it gathers despite COVID-19 is, predictably, determined by which group it is.
As scores of marchers gathered on the National Mall on Friday for the “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks Commitment March,” CNN ran with this: “Thousands gather for march on Washington,” a markedly less critical take on large gatherings than those it delivered elsewhere this week.
CNN anchor John King said that “somehow” Friday’s marchers were “respecting the premium the coronavirus pandemic puts on having a mask and keeping a safe distance.” Were they? It didn’t look that way to me.
This is how John King began the noon hour on CNN, boasting how there’s thousands on the Mall for the March on Washington while also “respect[ing] the premium the coronavirus pandemic on having a mask and keeping a safe distance.”
The media don’t care about guidelines. pic.twitter.com/Ouey6bBUIe
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 28, 2020
Rob Davidson, a physician, told Anderson Cooper on Friday that the crowd at President Trump’s speech worried him, but he accepted the risk of Friday’s protests because “this is a public health crisis they are marching against. Systemic racism has taken so many lives in this country throughout our history.”
If CNN’s argument is that some things are worth doing even if there is risk involved, the network would find millions of conservative sympathizers. Only its prime-time talent has selectively employed that argument to apply to racial justice protests but not to other gatherings such as religious services, which, believe it or not, are not only very important to people but constitutionally protected.
Responding to Charlie Kirk, who opened the Republican National Convention on Monday, CNN’s Chris Cuomo said of protesters, “You are dealing with people who are responding in this country to outrageous acts of social injustice. To say, ‘Well, it’s the same as going to church,’ no, it isn’t.”
He continued, “If you told people they couldn’t protest, if you invoked martial law about these types of situations, you would have chaos.”
The network’s producers, commentators, and reporters have been ready to extend the most charitable treatment to protesters and rioters who defy coronavirus health guidance while holding those who wish to and do participate in other events in contempt. That is asymmetric journalism.
