By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--September 19, 2020
Cover Story | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
Don’t expect any “Fair and Balanced” in election coverage from Fox News, which will come thundering through the Election 2020 Campaign like a herd of wild horses out on the plain, leaving nothing but hoof dust hanging in the air.
Fox headed into Election 2020 with three presidential popularity polls, each one of them indicating that President Donald Trump—who had little to no chance of victory, was badly trailing behind former Obama era vice president Joe Biden.“On Jan. 31, Trump issued a travel ban on China after the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan before issuing others in February and March, banning travel from Europe and other countries with coronavirus outbreaks. "We created this rush, and we didn’t have the ability to test or quarantine those people," the billionaire philanthropist said. "And so that seeded the disease here. You know, the ban probably accelerated that, the way it was executed," Gates said. “Wallace pressed Gates: "You’re saying that the travel bans made the situation worse, not better?” “Gates explained that "March saw this incredible explosion -- the West Coast coming from China and then the East Coast coming out of Europe, and so, even though we’d seen China and we’d seen Europe, that testing capacity and clear message of how to behave wasn’t there.” “On Thursday, Gates said the Food and Drug Administration has "lost a lot of credibility" during the pandemic in an interview with Bloomberg. “Early on in response to COVID-19, experts from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were in regular contact with the Trump administration, urging officials to come up with a plan for testing and to get surveillance data up on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, STAT News reports.
Support Canada Free Press
“There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus,” Gates wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on March 31. “The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of Covid-19.”With the Gates interview, Wallace—and therefore Fox News—has laid the groundwork for the presidential question: Did President Trump, as Gates contends “worsened the coronavirus pandemic with his travel bans?” Don’t expect anything “Fair and Balanced” during Fox News’ presentation of the first 2020 presidential debate. Fox News is 90 percent entertainment, 10 percent all about ratings—and zero percent ‘Fair and Balanced’. The best part about watching Fox News is that most of their viewers now know it.
View Comments