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“15 days to slow the spread” kicked off four years ago Saturday, sending the media into perhaps its most deranged cycle of my lifetime.
I dove back into some of the worst lockdown media coverage from those early days.
Buckle in, this one’s long. ⤵️

The real worst of the coverage was when states started reopening. The media outrage was palpable. Republicans wanted people to die, we were told.
Remember @TheAtlantic’s “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice”? You may’ve forgotten how wild the text of it was. I did.

But that wasn’t a one off sentiment. The belief four years ago among the media was that allowing people to leave their homes was tantamount to killing people.
@washingtonpost called it a “deadly error” — not in an opinion piece, mind you, but in a “health” news headline.

What we should’ve been doing instead, to hear the press tell it, was employing “harsh steps,” @nytimes said.
“Americans must be persuaded to stay home” and “travel restrictions should be extended” they said.

@politico thought the same thing. In their magazine, the outlet called for a “national quarantine” which they dubbed a “common-sense” approach.

@CNN was among the most crazed. They went after the supposed morality behind the “Open it Up” movement, which they called “downright dangerous.”
The people who thought it was okay to go outside were “downright dangerous.”

I want to pause here to point out something important. Yes, Covid killed millions of people. But this wasn’t the bubonic plague we were talking about.
And states like Florida were able to safely reopen, as I, @CurtisHouck and others pointed out back in the thick of it.

Anyway, back to the coverage, because it was just so ridiculous.
@USATODAY kept with the deadly theme, calling reopenings “Russian roulette.”
Again. This to describe letting people go to stores.

You can’t overstate the fear mongering from the press. Here’s @TIME giving tips and tricks to how you can stay hidden in your home if your state reopens.
The picture selection to accompany these pieces is an editorial choice.

And, of course, reopening was racist. You may remember that, in those halcyon days, everything was — this was the summer of race after all — and reopenings and lockdowns were no exception for @voxdotcom, @AP, @NewsHour & @Salon.

But the craziest example is from @ABC.
Whenever I see “analysis” in a headline, particularly about news that intersects with liberal sacred cows, I expect what follows will be preposterous.
This was no exception.

You may think the 33 word headline from @BusinessInsider is bad, but the photo selection really elevates the embarrassment all involved should feel about the choices made for this piece, in retrospect.

Like the Business Insider piece, lots of outlets really leaned into the panic porn when it came to reopening schools.
@Reuters made sure to include the case counts as a counter to Trump in the headline. How they wanted their readers to feel about his comments is clear.

Maybe they were channeling @rweingartin, the head of the teachers association and then-media darling.
Remember when kids were going to be fine even if they had to sacrifice because they were “resilient”? I do.

A quick aside: @rweingarten has taken to claiming that she and her org always wanted to keep schools open.
It isn’t true. Weingarten long pushed for schools to be closed.
This is why I take screenshots.

There were lots of other outlets who pushed to close schools. Here’s @CNN, advising their readers that schools weren’t safe for kids.

@ABC fact checked the idea that kids got better faster, calling the claim “misleading.”
It wasn’t. Even the Times admitted - again, this isn’t hindsight - around the same time that kids recovered quicker.
But ABC wanted to stoke fear. I can’t see another explanation.

@washingtonpost called school reopenings a “fantasy”

I’ll let this @guardian headline speak for itself.

It’s an understatement to say there were consequences to the lockdowns the press cheered for.
Learning loss devastated kids. For the rest of America, lockdowns had a huge toll on mental and physical health.

None of this should’ve been a surprise. We knew that lockdowns had serious consequences. I wrote about it for @nytopinion…in 2020.

You probably won’t be surprised that, even after the consequence became clear, the media haven’t learned any lessons.
The outside still isn’t safe, so say @nytimes, @washingtonpost & @CNN.
These were just last summer. Will the press ever get over it?
I’ll bet the under.

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