President Trump has bought into the idea, mostly found on the Right, that the media’s hysterical coverage of the pandemic goes away immediately after the election.
He’s wrong. It will still be there, but depending on who wins, it may look a little different.
If Trump wins, the media will continue to hate him and insist that yet more lives are being lost because of his administration’s failures. There may be nominally less coverage, but it won’t go away because the liberal audiences of CNN and MSNBC need it as a security blanket.
If Biden wins, only the tone of the coverage will change, shifting from a face-melting panic to a he’s-got-this calm. If COVID-19 infection numbers go down, the media will credit Biden. If they go up, the media will say it’s not his fault because there was a mess he inherited from Trump.
Even worse, the media’s drumbeat of total hospitalizations and deaths will still be needed for Biden and congressional Democrats to continue their push for more federal spending aimed at keeping people locked inside their homes, unable to return to normal economic activity, and dependent on the government for indefinite help. Democrats have enjoyed every minute of being portrayed by the media as hard truth-telling leaders who take charge in a moment of crisis. Why would they want to give that up?
It’s wishful thinking to believe that saturation coverage of the pandemic has only been a political maneuver by the media and that it serves a purpose only up until the election. Its utility goes long past that.
