Pundit Mds

Tampa Bay, Fl
Opinion by: E. Eugene Webb PhD
Author:  In Search of Robin  So You Want to Blog.

Have you noticed recently how all of those political pundits that you watch on the national news, on Sunday talk shows, on the morning talk shows have turned from political pundits to medical experts?

It just seems to me that people who three weeks ago or a month ago spent their entire life professing their political expertise have now magically become experts in viruses, virus transmission and the mitigation of those viruses.

I appreciate their expertise as reporters, but standing there with a panic-stricken  face telling the world over and over and over and over again about the upcoming disaster, the ongoing disaster and the likelihood that all of us will somehow end up in a grave in titled 2020 PANDEMIC just seems to be counterproductive to me.

I’m not sure that we’re not facing two literal pandemics here. The first one is the obvious pandemic of the Coronavirus, and the second one the out-of-control news media.

I think it’s time for the management of the national networks, the cable networks and even the local TV stations to take a half a step back and really consider if dedicating 80% of their half-hour or one-hour newscast to the Coronavirus is totally justified.

I don’t want to minimize what’s going on here; it's serious, and we should be paying attention to what people are telling us, but repeating it over and over and over again every four or five hours in a 24-hour day news cycle only adds to the panic, and it doesn’t really add to the mitigation of the pandemic.

You can only tell people to wash their hands so many times, tell them to only assemble in so small groups so many times, you can only tell them to maintain a social safe distance so many times, and at some point they just turn you off.

A big part of the problem with the financial market today is their being fed a constant diet of disaster from the news media and let’s face it the guys in the financial business are not really rocket scientists when it comes to the rest of what’s going on in the world.

They take all the stuff from the news media as absolutely dead serious and instantaneously react to it.

We’re not going to see a mitigation of the panic until we see a mitigation of the news media. It’s time to report this for what it is a serious story reported in a sensible way and not like the latest edition of Chicago 911 or the most current disaster movie.

Let’s all work together.

That includes all of our brothers and sisters in the news media both print an electronic and let’s quit fanning the fire of panic related to this pandemic.

It’s serious we get it. It’s time to start reporting in a rational way quit creating voluminous websites of information and constantly reporting on this thing at every newscast at every moment in and every day.

I have faith in the American people; I have faith in the global population. I think they’re in, they understand we’re faced with a major issue that needs to be addressed, and they are more than willing to step up and address it without it being pounded down their brains every minute of every day.

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