Expert explains to CNN how right-wing media's response to coronavirus is “really problematic”
Professor Dannagal Young on right-wing media: “You have the downplaying, which from a public health standpoint is really problematic”
Published
Citation From the March 1, 2020, edition of CNN's Reliable Sources
STELTER: Unfortunately, this virus has infected the political arena in ways that are truly jaw-dropping. Pro-Trump media stars are defending Trump's handling of the outbreak by accusing news outlets -- I can't even believe it -- they are accusing news outlets of rooting for the virus. Watch.
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RUSH LIMBAUGH (RADIO SHOW HOST): It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump.
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STELTER: Recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh, one of many cooking up partisan conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. Chief among them: It’s the news media’s fault.
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MICK MULVANEY (WHITE HOUSE CHIEF-OF-STAFF): They think this is going to be what brings down the president. That's what this is all about.
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STELTER: Acting chief-of-staff Mick Mulvaney making this shocking claim that the media is somehow using the virus to take down Trump. Mulvaney picking up where Fox' Sean Hannity left off, blaming Democrats for making this political.
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SEAN HANNITY (FOX NEWS HOST) Sadly, politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump.
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STELTER: These talking points are bouncing back and forth between the Trumps and their TV surrogates, portraying the president as the victim-in-chief and going as far as to say the president’s perceived enemies actually want people to die.
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DONALD TRUMP JR.: Anything that they can use to try to hurt Trump, they will.
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But for them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so they can end Donald Trump’s streak of winning is a new level of sickness.
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STELTER: This is not the first time the Trump machine has conjured up a conspiracy narrative, full of misinformation and fearmongering, but this time the backdrop is a public health emergency. Still, irresponsible claims abound.
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LIMBAUGH: Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus.
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Yeah, I'm dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.
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STELTER: Experts have debunked that, but it's all part of a Trump defense strategy: Fighting a virus by playing politics.
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DANNAGAL YOUNG (ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE): You have the downplaying, which from a public health standpoint is really problematic because the goal of messaging in the context of a health crisis is really to increase people's awareness of the severity and their susceptibility to the illness, so then they are more motivated to take actions that are adaptive functional responses, like "I'm more aware of this now, I will wash my hands, I won't touch my face. I won't touch railings." Those kinds of things.
STELTER: Right.
YOUNG: Right. Now there's that, and that has been interrupted by sort of downplaying the issue which then perhaps make people maybe not as motivated to then seek out information or engage in these potentially adaptive responses, which can have really bad consequences.
The second thing they've done in addition to the downplaying is the reframing of the virus altogether, which I think is fascinating. So, if you have an audience for whom that virus and pathogens are going to make you fearful, what can you do. Well, you can reframe it as something that is being weaponized by an out-group.
STELTER: So don't fear the virus, fear the Democrats, fear the media.
YOUNG: Correct. The threat then changes. The threat becomes the Democrats and the media, and when you think about that language, "weaponizing a virus," where is that housed in our minds, psychologically? Where is that schema housed? That's related to biological warfare, terrorism. Right, so the natural extensions in your brain when you hear "weaponized virus" are really dire and really, well, kind of prying that in-group / out-group feeling.
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YOUNG: We have right now a presidency that really capitalizes on the construction of spectacle and the assumption that perceptions on the part of the public can be constructed through spectacle and through mediated spectacle. That works in the context of issues and phenomena that are very distant from the lives of everyday Americans. That works in the context of issues like, terrorism, which is far away, or threats of immigration, which are far away. Where it might not work so well, like Catherine said, is in the context of something like an illness that may come to your town and would affect your direct life.