Media top headlines August 2
In media news today, Chris Cuomo gets ripped for accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of holding the U.S. 'hostage' to COVID, critics slam DC Mayor Muriel Bowser for violating her own mask mandate, and ABC's political director calls out the Biden admin's 'confusing' COVID messaging
"Breaking Points" co-hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti accused the media of purposefully "fearmongering" amid the current surge of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
On Monday's installment of the podcast, Enjeti began by calling out the "total and complete cluster," pointing to outlets like NBC News, The New York Times and The Washington Post who've all hyped the spread of the virus among vaccinated Americans while lacking context about the low number of hospitalizations and deaths that such spikes led to.
Enjeti tore into NBC News' "world-star idiot" Ken Dilanian for reporting that "At least 125,000 vaccinated Americans tested positive for Covid," stressing that "scary" figure is out of 145,000,000 vaccinated Americans and similarly slammed the Post's story about a CDC study out of Massachusetts and how "vaccinated people made up three-quarters of those infected."
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"None of them died!" Enjeti explained. "Four of them were hospitalized out of hundreds!"
"And, by the way, this was an area with very high vaccination rates!" Ball chimed in. "So guess what? If there's very high vaccination rates, then you're gonna have a high percentage of vaccinated people who are the ones getting it! It doesn't mean that the vaccine doesn't work! And it's all intentionally scaremongering."
"It's pure fearmongering," Enjeti agreed.
"For profit! Fearmongering for profit. And it is the best gift they could ever give to anti-vaxxers!" Ball continued.
Enjeti, who launched "Breaking Points" with Ball this summer after the two of them parted from The Hill as co-hosts of "Rising," then had some fun at the expense of the Times, who was called out by the White House's COVID-19 rapid response team after the paper reported that the highly-contagious Delta variant "may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated."
"So things are so bad that the New York Times is exaggerating so much that the White House is saying ‘hold on a second,’" Enjeti reacted. "That is the level of insanity that we've reached."
He continued, "The media is essentially saying- trying to build up the case for the mask mandate and all thi- by undermining the case for the vaccine itself… Even the White House, who I think has gone way too far embracing some of this public health guidance, even they are saying this is a total disaster."
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"The story is the vaccines work. And all of these people scaremongering for profit and clicks should be completely ashamed of themselves," Ball said, adding, "And by the way, Twitter, where's their ‘misinformation’ label? Where's their ban?"
Both Ball and Enjeti agreed that if such rhetoric came from "right-wing" media personalities, Big Tech would censor them.
"This was happening at a time of terrible ratings for the media. Frankly, Delta is the best goddamn thing that ever happened to them," Enjeti said. "They miss Trump so much… Delta is the best thing that could've happened because now, they need to gin you up so you have a reason to watch again."
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