America Must Hold the Corrupt News Media Accountable in Order to Survive
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We must find a way to hold the corrupt corporate news media accountable before they destroy our country. – That’s been a consistent theme here at Today’s Campaign Update for four years now (today is the 4th anniversary of the very first Campaign Update posted on my Facebook page during the heat of the 2016 campaign), and it has become more urgent than ever. Because, as I noted yesterday, the media literally has the deaths of an untold number of Americans on its hands due to its focused disinformation campaign related to Hydroxychloroquine.
Dr. David Samadi, a Fox News medical contributor, put it this way on Twitter yesterday:
The media’s obsession with harming the President literally resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Not to mention state governors who banned this drug simply out of disdain for the President.
I don’t think we have ever seen such an egregious misuse of power in our lives.
— Dr. David Samadi (@drdavidsamadi) July 3, 2020
This is exactly the thing. Let’s remember that the media’s campaign to demonize the use of HCQ in treating COVID-19 provided cover to despot Democrat governors like Steve Sisolak in Nevada and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan to temporarily ban the use of the drug for that purpose in their states. There is no question that that campaign, which included the knowing dissemination of bogus “studies” – one of which shamefully came out of the CDC – also intimidated doctors all over the country who might have otherwise prescribed HCQ to their patients and potentially saved their lives.
But while we focus our ire on our depraved news media establishment, we need to also remember the key role played by another prominent individual in all of this, a man who most assuredly knew better. Dr. Samadi called that person out as well:
I told you for months that hydroxychloroquine was effective against COVID-19.
Dr. Fauci and the CDC said that it was not only ineffective, but dangerous.
Now, the science has proven me right.
We must use facts and science rather than politics.
Why would Fauci have done this?
— Dr. David Samadi (@drdavidsamadi) July 3, 2020
Why indeed? To be clear: Dr. Fauci and the CDC have known since at least 2005 about the efficacy of HCQ in treating COVID-like viral infections. Yet, from the moment President Trump touted its use related to this virus at an early White House task force press briefing, Fauci has been in the media panning it. In those same media appearances, Fauci has focused on the promotion of incredibly expensive, unproven experimental drugs being developed by an array of Big Pharma companies in their quest to make billions off of this national health crisis.
Why? Why would he do that? Isn’t the answer obvious?
Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is closely tied into and receives support from those same pharmaceutical manufacturers. Those Pharma companies essentially serve as NIAID’s lobby before congress, which helps to explain why a government institute that has consistently failed in its mission sports a $5 billion budget.
Oh.
HCQ is cheap, it is widely available and it has been used for decades mainly as a malaria treatment all over the world. There is no money to be made from HCQ.
For the corrupt, corporate news media, the motive initially seems less clear. That is, until you get to the next commercial break and suffer through yet another 90-second ad for some new drug with a mysterious name that was made up by a million dollar consultant.
This drug won’t cure you – because, hey, there’s no money in curing you – but it will dampen your symptoms at a very high price if you take it every day for the rest of your life. And, as you watch the images of some chubby 60 year-old who has the same ailment as you do leading a marching band through the streets of some Hollywood sound set designed to look like a 1950s town in middle America, you will want crave drug even as you sit through the 75 seconds of carefully-written legal disclaimers describing all of the horrible things that drug just might do to you instead of alleviating your symptoms.
The air time for that ad costs a bunch of money on NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC or even low-rated CNN. It is the life’s blood that keeps those fake news operations on the air.
Oh.
Let’s also be clear that the demonization of HCQ was not – as those corrupt media organizations contend – just a matter of them reporting the news. There is no question that it was a highly-coordinated effort – complete with focus-grouped talking points that every reporter parroted word-for-word – that was motivated by the belief that demonizing that cheap, plentiful, well-understood drug would harm the President and his re-election chances.
This isn’t journalism- it’s a political campaign. Can any thinking person really doubt that if Barack Obama had endorsed HCQ, the media’s and Fauci’s reactions would have been entirely different? Like, 180 degrees different? Of course, they would have been.
Had Obama endorsed the drug, Governors Whitmer and Sisolak would have been demanding their legislatures allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to give the stuff away for free. They’d have ordered that every 7-11 in their state stock the stuff on their candy shelves and forced Girl Scouts to hand it out along with their cookies.
You all know this is true, don’t you? Of course you do.
The simple fact is that Americans are dead today because the news media and Democrat governors, supported by Anthony Fauci, treated HCQ not as the potentially life-saving medication that it is, but as a political football.
It’s easy to see how Fauci can and eventually will be held accountable for his serial mendacity about every element of this pandemic. If we are to ultimately survive as a society in its current form, America must find an effective way to hold these corrupt media organizations accountable as well.
That is all.
