6 June 2021: Press Failing to Hold Power to Account in COVID Nursing Home Death Scandals

LeDuff: Elderly Covid Deaths In Michigan Don't Add Up. Why Doesn't The Media Care More?

Columnist Charlie Leduff has a theory for why the news media in both New York and in Michigan seem so uninterested in pursuing the big stories of both states' undercount of COVID nursing home deaths:

Why is the media so bewitched by Gov. Andrew Cuomo's creepy office conduct? For the same reason the media is intoxicated with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's little airplane lies.

It is a misdirect by the press corps to cover their failure to expose the bigger lies. Lies the press willingly went along with. Lies that the press must own up to since they amplified and broadcast them.

Untold more elderly died in long-term elderly care facilities from Covid-19 than either governor would admit. Both Whitmer and Cuomo knew the data they were feeding the public was misleading or incomplete.

But the press didn't bother to hold power to account, no matter what their Twitter pages say....

This should have been worldwide news months ago, had the press pushed harder.

Instead, theirs was a happy-to-be-there sort of deal. In New York, the media starred as bit players in Cuomo's press conference serial. In Michigan, it was see us next to Big Gretch in the VP sweepstakes. See us next to Big Gretch taking a knee. They were right there in the same virtual room, virtually standing alongside the Governor.

All the while the elderly were dying in their wards.

The media blithely accepted Whitmer's claims of science and data without ever seeing any besides the daily vomit of positivity projections and growth rate variations and vital records reviews. The most central and basic data – nursing home deaths – went unchallenged. The press were meek and outmaneuvered and now they are embarrassed.

So, to right their wrong without every having to admit the wrong, the New York press corps runs with Cuomo's harassment scandal. The Michigan media picks up on the airplane. In this way, a pound of flesh can be had without the messiness of having to acknowledge they were duped.

That's not all the news coming from LeDuff's 3 June 2020 column, where we'll catch up with the rest in a second entry featuring the column.