Jason, a lot of this really boils down to common sense. Who are you going to trust … a news source controlled by a single individual with a very strong point of view, or a news network owned by a multinational organization with numerous stakeholders and no single individual able to dictate content? There is a rule of thumb here: the more people involved in a decision-making process, the more likely the decision will be a generic one, acceptable to the majority of those involved.
The reason is simple. Suppose you and I are committed to the same values and goals, along with a half dozen other people, and the eight of us have to make a key decision together. That decision will be shaped by the concerns, ideas and preferences as well aesthetics of all eight of us … it will not be as ideosyncratic or biased as a decision made solely by you or by me.
This same principle holds true for all of our news sources. The three rightwing “networks” are actually the mouthpieces for three extravagantly wealthy individuals who exercise absolute control over content: Fox News (Rupert Murdoch); One America News Network, aka OANN (Robert Herring Sr.) and Newsmax (Christopher Ruddy).
The traditional networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) have many stakeholders that influence the news that they broadcast; no one individual can arbitrarily dictate content or change stories on a whim. Do newscasters on these networks make mistakes? Of course. Do they generally reflect a professional, urban sensibility (sometimes referred to as a liberal bias)? Yes. But are the stories that they offer the public newsworthy and largely factual? For the most part, yes. No one was protesting that the networks were churning out “fake news” or accusing them of being the “enemy of the people” until the advent of Trump. Did they truly go from being largely reliable to being utterly dishonest overnight?
Of course, news is not limited to TV. News is also disseminated by radio, digital platforms and the print media. So consider the many publications that generate “news” for the rightwing. Magazines and periodicals range from those that target the so-called “low information voter” and which are often cartoonish in their biases, such as the Western Journal, to highly polished and sophisticated magazines like ‘Reason,’ which is aimed at a more intellectually oriented audience. But they all have one thing in common: they currently or previously received substantial funding from one or more of several dozen trusts and foundations established by the Koch network … a group of approximately 500 individuals heavily invested in the fossil fuels industry, which meets twice a year to discuss how to strategically support organizations and politicians that will advance their agenda. And the network counts among its allies Rupert Murdoch, Robert Herring Sr. and Christopher Ruddy.
And what is the agenda of the Koch network? They have been building this massive propaganda machine over the past four decades in order to undermine public confidence in both government and science … if we distrust our own government we are more likely to vote for candidates pledged to roll back corporate regularions—and if we distrust science, we are more likely to believe those who tell us that climate change is a myth, or that “more research” is needed before concluding that the use of fossil fuels has caused irreparable damage to the environment. Both of those outcomes make it easier for members of the network to continue to extract obscene profits from an industry that is incredibly harmful to this planet.
This may sound paranoid, but rightwing news, and the leadership of the Republican Party, are largely in service to the fossil fuels industry — and their objectives are not aligned with the well-being of the American people as a whole. Just one small example of how our world is being changed by the burning of coal, gasoline and oil: I live in Hawaii, which for as long as anyone knows has sat just north of the Pacific Hurricane Zone. Tne average summer water temperature was about 79 to 80 degrees when I attended college here in the islands, some foty years ago. Over the past couple of decades, the average water temperature in the summer has risen slightly, and is now 82 degrees, another example of global warming. But that small change is no big deal, right?
The minimum temperature needed to maintain cyclonic comditions in the ocean is — you guessed it — 82 degrees! The State of Hawaii is no longer just outside of the Pacific Hurricane Zone … we are now in it, and subject to the same brutal weather conditions that we see every year in the Caribbean. Global warming is scoffed at because the changes have been so slight in many cases … but what people overlook is how delicately our ecosysyem is balanced. Two or three degrees one way or another — on average, over a span of time — can have dramatic consequences. We built human civilization on fossil fuels and took Mother Nature for granted … and that was a mistake that we are paying for dearly.
Doubtful about what I am saying? Think back to the 2008 presidential election. Both Obama and McCain stressed the dangers of climate change and pledged to do something to reverse the trend. Now think back to 2012 … was addressing climate change still part of the Republican platform? Did Romney pledge to aggressively address it? No … and the reason is transparent: the 2010 “tea party” victory finally gave the Koch network (which spent a great deal of money on behalf of tea party candidates) effective control of the G.O.P.
Science now takes a seat behind political expediency on the right — a tragic inversion of prioiries continued by Trump when he withdrew from the Paris Cimate Accord, and when he rejected out of hand a sobering cautionary report on our environment prepared and submitted by 13 federal agencies with the comment, “I just don’t believe it!” and yet again during the pandemic, when he attacked our nation’s best healthcare researchers and stood up on TV and declared that he was “smarter than the doctors” (he isn’t, obviously, but it was a claim consistent with the rightwing’s steady attack against climatologists, who are repeatedly dismissed as “environmental extremists.”)
The Koch network’s agenda isn’t limited to protecting the fossil fuels industry, regardless of the environmental cost. They also push a radical form of libertarianism which ultimately would lead to the repeal of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and even the closure of public schools. In the words if Charles Koch, their task is to “dismantle the statist paradigm.”
I apologize for the lengthy digression, but I felt that much of what I am saying wouldn’t make sense without providing the context. Check out what I am sharing with you … go to Wikipedia and look up the three “conservative” networks and read carefully what you find there. Then spend some time warching or listening to PBS … it is dry and boring if you have been addicted to cable news. But what you are getting is simply the facts — presented without drama. We used to call that journalism.
As for herd immunity, the magic number varies somewhat from country to country, since it is affected by population distribution, internal mobility, demographics, etc. It also varies according to the disease — the more contagious the illness, the higher the percentage of the population that must be vaccinated or otherwise immune. For example, 80% of the population was enough to stop the spread of polio, while measles — much more transmissible — required 95%.
It was critical to achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible when vaccines became available because coronaviruses are inclined to mutate and it was virtually inevitable that new, more contagious variants would emerge if we didn’t stop the spread at an early stafe. Unfortunately, due primarily to vaccine resistance, we failed to achieve that goal and now we have the omicron variant which is, in fact, far more contagious than earlier forms of COVID-19. Initially, the CDC estimated that we might achieve herd immunity with as few as 70% of the population fully vaccinated. Now, estimates run as high as 90% or more. And some experts say that herd immunity is no longer a goal: the current vaccines are far less effective against the omicron variant than they were against previous variants. In other words, it may be too late to stop this virus … we may have to learn to live (and in some cases, die) with it.
I have enjoyed our dialogue. Best wishes for the holiday season, and have a safe and healthy New Year.
