If You've Never Seen John Oliver

John Oliver was, many moons ago, a correspondent on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He is funny and well spoken. He was British, but is now a naturalized US Citizen. When Jon was filming a documentary in the middle east, John Oliver filled in and was great. So great in fact, that HBO gave him a show. Since not everyone has HBO, not everyone has seen it. But they have this episode available for free from youtube.  Here is the LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRFbwjwQ4VE.

I say this because John Oliver made news here by stating the obvious. I will just pull directly from CNN for the explanation (LINK).

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But there was one thing -- actually one sentence of 11 words -- that really stood out to me in the Oliver segment. And it was this, when he was talking about Fox News' coronavirus coverage:

"They only pretend to believe these things on television for money."

The point Oliver was making was that even as many Fox News anchors were pushing the idea that coronavirus was less virulent than the flu and that it was the product of a hyper-partisan media trying to "get" Trump, the company was warning its employees to stay at home and "reducing the staff footprint at our headquarters in New York."

Why the contrast between what their anchors were pushing and the internal guidance being given to staff? Because, as Oliver rightly notes, Fox News is in the business of selling a certain kind of news to its largely conservative (and very large) viewer base. And that "news" is generally speaking, centered around the idea that the mainstream media is in cahoots with Democrats to screw, frighten and otherwise mistreat the average Joe and Jane out there.

Or, as Oliver put it: "Many in conservative media have found it easy to fold this virus into narratives that they have been carefully building up for decades."

So when coronavirus deaths began to mount across the world, and it became clear that the hopes of limiting community spread in the United States were in vain, it was simply too tempting for Fox News. They played the coronavirus story as they play virtually every other story -- as an indictment of the media and its biases. See, the real story here -- that the mainstream media isn't telling you -- is that this is all overhyped! This is like a cold virus! Hydroxychloroquine will knock it all out anyway. And on and on and on.