Media sensationalism is pushing me towards conspiracy theories

in covid •  4 years ago  (edited)

I'm generally quite mistrusting of the government just in a general and I have very good reasons for feeling that way which I will explain later in this post.

The media's job, at least as far as I can guess, is to keep government or various officials honest right? Well when the media seems to be more interested in misinformation it makes it difficult for me to believe anyone.

6052275_032620ccapelmhursthospitalimg.jpg
source

It began for me with the images of overwhelmed hospitals, particularly the one in Elmhurst Queens, NYC. A reporter or representative of the hospital showed us long lines and basically just presented an impression of panic... only to days later have the hashtag #filmmyhospital trend on Twitter and images of no lines, no panic, no real activity emerge of the exact same place.

EUgh2KGWkAEvlNA.jpg
source

I'm not an expert in panic, but generally when nobody is around panic is easy to avoid. One guy went inside the hospital in Elmhurst to find an empty lobby and then immediately get told that he can not film inside the hospital? huh? Why?

EUkFDpRWoAMLNe.jpg
source

As I start to look into it more an more it starts to become dubious that the person who made the original report on the overwhelmed hospital even works there at all... which is what she claimed.

I don't want to downplay the whole virus thing but at the same time, if there is a genuine panic, where is it? It certainly doesn't appear to be at Elmhurst...


from the aplanetruth 4u channel

I am far from NYC, about as far as one can get from it actually, but my friends who live there all say the same thing - that there isn't really any panic except from the people who are buying into what the TV and social media is saying.


In another article that I actually can verify, the authors attempted to state that South Korea is contemplating using electric wristbands to enforce quarantine. This is a scary sounding headline for anyone that enjoys some semblance of freedom in their lives.

PYH2020040606100001300.jpg
source
this picture was meant to indicate social distancing in Korea... but could it also be because those are the only friggin places to sit?

The article in question actually does kinda tell the truth in that buried in paragraph 3 they do indicate that this is only used on the people who are forced to do unmonitored self-isolation upon arriving from overseas. I know many people, both Korean and non-Korean that live currently in South Korea. I asked them about quarantine and they said "there isn't one." My friend's birthday was yesterday and he showed me pictures of them out riding bicycles and later having drinks at a bar... legally.

Basically, the article was clickbait and gives people the impression that Korea is in full lockdown like a lot of the rest of the world is... but only it isn't like that at all in South Korea right now.


Why is it so impossible for the media of today to simply report what is actually going on? They only encourage or push people like me to go to non main stream media sources in order to get the other side of the story because the media will find the craziest images that they can and then attempt to say that this image, or this scene in the background, is representative of what is going on. If you bother to dig you find that the scene or image was definitely cherry-picked and may even involve stand-in actors and if that is the case... why would you do that?

Other times, they use footage that isn't even from the place they are reporting on.

rty.png
source

Some people say that it is irresponsible of me to downplay this pandemic but how can I possibly not be suspicious when the very people that are supposed to help us know the truth seem to be actively preventing us from knowing the truth?

As for my mistrust in the government: I worked for 2 federal agencies when I lived in USA. We would lie to the public on a regular basis over trivial shit that didn't actually mean anything. I have no idea why we did that, but we did do it. So I have a profound distrust of government because of this first-hand experience. If we would lie about why the E.P.A. is plugging oil wells in Southern Illinois we certainly would lie about how we are handling a pandemic.

But now we also can't trust the people that are meant to be exposing those government lies... So I ask, who can we trust?

I go down a rabbit hole of what is dubbed as "conspiracy theory" of youtube clips and websites but I wouldn't fucking need to do that if someone in traditional sources of information would tell the damn truth every once and a while.

Am I crazy here? Do you feel the same way?

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

zinc kiddies, magnesium, iodine, vit c, sunshine, moderate sport, lots of water, garlic... ez if you start "healthy".

Man, I hate conspiracy stuff, so it is hard to make me catch that train. But, even though it is a pandemic, it isn't hitting the world in the same way everywhere. I do know doctors in Hungary who is still waiting for the pandemic to hit (meaning they do not have any covid-19 patients yet), and I also know a doctor in the number one hospital for treating sick people in Hungary, and they for sure walk around with masks and it is serious. It is also a fact that lots of doctors and nurses and health personnel in Italy have died because of the virus. So, there is reality to all of it...

But, then again, there is a lot of fear in people, and media is forced to write about it to at least earn some ad-money.

I believe, in the hunt for reality, it is probably wiser to check your Facebook, Instagram, and read reports from actual people in the middle of the crisis. Maybe they say that it is peace and nothing is happening, or maybe they are fighting for their own and other peoples lives because of the virus... but I believe the first-person stories are the most trustworthy here.

Nice answer. I take the whole thing seriously, but also believe there are media outlets out there that are making it appear bigger than it is, and I am still looking for what that might be. When people start saying things like "one world currency" or "to get us all RFID chipped" I can't get on board that.

However, I really don't understand the constant fear mongering, especially when I have people that live in the areas in question that tell me the opposite of what the news says.

conspiracy theory is a term coined by the cia to discredit suspiscious observers following jfk assassination, look it up, and so you will be able to look in disdain when a moron tell you "conspiracy theory" and remember this same morons is worthless and don't waste time with it, unless you think there is a chance to break the neuropath system of conditionning that the medias brainwashing did on him... rest assured, reality, will smash his illusions and programing... the germans really believed they were winning on the eastern front...

I live in small country which was, so far, spared from the worst of COVID and the number of fatalities is very small. Few days ago the authorities reported about the youngest victim, a 46-year old man. Health official in charge said something about unfortunate man not having any comorbidity or having risk factors. That was enough for some of the media screaming "46-YEAR HEALTHY MAN DIES OF COVID-19!!!" followed by usual "stay home or die" and "anyone venturing outside is a monster that should be arrested or shot" messages by bien pensants on social media.

Then again, this is a small country and when something like that happens, everybody knows everybody and facts can be checked relatively quickly. It turned out that 46-year old man wasn't healthy at all. He was tethraplegic, practically disabled with all kinds of terrible chronic diseases that actually required 24/7 medical care. Yet, lot of media people thought that the proper clickbait headline was more worth than actual fact-checking.

I'm not saying that the disease isn't serious, but it is one of many examples media is "creatively interpreting" numbers and fact for the sake of ad income or some political/ideological agenda. I noticed some journalists even admitting that they are pushing apocalypse narrative in order to scare general population, because "otherwise idiots would continue spreading the disease instead of staying home".

well i am sure there are a lot of various reasons for the media deciding to write what they do but yeah, i recall a "healthy soccer player" that died from Covid but also happened to be battling cancer for 7 years.

If there is some sort of agenda for making this out to be bigger than it is, I really have a difficult time imagining what it could be.

So you think the long lines at the hospital were staged, like fucking CGI? This is the type of piss poor "information" that enables Trump supporters to claim the equipment NYC hospitals need is a hoax. The hospital changed how they did things, just because you don't see a huge line outside a hospital doesn't mean they are not overwhelmed.

"The dramatic increase in patients required the staff at Elmhurst to make changes in the way they staffed their employees and in treating patients diagnosed with the virus.

“We had to figure out who of all those patients was really sick and who needed the most intense care [or] who could get a medical screening exam, be given good discharge instructions and told that they could go home fairly rapidly after a thorough evaluation,” Kessler said.

According to Kessler, the issue wasn’t the amount of patients admitted to the hospital but rather their acuity, or severity of their illness. The doctor said that over the past few weeks, Elmhurst saw an increase in those patients who became seriously ill from COVID-19.

“Now, it wasn’t so much that there was a huge volume of patients walking in, there was just a large number of really sick patients. We’ve intubated more patients in two or three days than we would in two or three months,” Kessler said.

To offer an alternative to going inside the hospital for testing, Elmhurst set up an outdoor tent next to the emergency department.

“Some people were just coming to the emergency department because they wanted to get tested. So we were able to give them an option that didn’t require them to come to the emergency department, they had the option, if they chose, to get tested,” said Kessler.

https://qns.com/story/2020/04/06/an-inside-look-at-elmhurst-hospital-as-told-by-the-director-of-the-emergency-department/

Flagged for spreading disinformation

why do people immediately jump to Trump supporters just because someone questions the media?

So there is just never a line at the hospital at all but on that particular day it stretched out into the street like Space Mountain? Gotcha..

Like the ambulances are all parked behind, no one is milling about, and when the guy walks in the front door nothing is happening, he is told he can't film, and there is no reason to raise at lease a little bit of suspicion?

I guess we are just wired differently.

Flag away dude, i didn't spread any information other than the fact that CBS intentionally put an image that wasn't even the right hospital which they later claimed was a "mistake" but come on now... we all know what is going on there.

I do feel the same way, Although the pandemic is real but media do exaggerate stuff which isn't required just for the TRP and money off course. Which is not ethical though.