Will American Journalists Learn Their "Chicken Little" Lesson from Coronavirus?

Millennials are so cute.

They think global warming is both real and new.  But as a veteran of America and the American education/media system I've seen a bevy of "global warmings" before.

My earliest recollection was global cooling.  I am old enough to remember it, though not fully understand it.  I was told by my "elders" we were due for another ice age, and was more excited about the return of woolly mammoth than how well the 70's insulation was in our house.  But I was assured there'd be a lot more snow days when this inevitable ice age came.

The second was (of all things) the evil paper companies who were going to cut down every single tree in America.

Never mind this lie was told to me by a then-24 year old ditz with an education degree.
Never mind most trees are unprofitable to cut down and turn to paper.
Never mind paper companies have acres of trees they grow under specific conditions to make them easier to produce into paper.

Nope, Georgia Pacific was going to cut down every single tree and all of America would look like Nebraska.

The third time the sky was falling was the rain forests of the Amazon.  We were told (by those same low-IQ "teachers") that the Amazon rainforest was the "lungs" of the world. And without them, we would all run out of oxygen.  And if we just donated what little money our then-12 year old hands had, somehow that would stop the deforestation in a country some 4,000 miles away.  The remnant of that lie still remains today with the "Rain Forest Cafe" which you can still visit - and get shitty food at - at the Mall of America.

On the heels of "the Amazon rain forest" was "the ozone layer."  Without it we would all die of skin cancer because evil corporations wanted to kill their customers...making perfect sense.  And in a blatant Orwellian aim to scaremonger children into environmentalism (and homosexuality, no seriously, think about it) a cartoon called "Captain Planet" was created making little nazi-do-gooding crusaders of children who didn't know any better.

The fifth time the sky was falling (and still is) was global warming.  Many of our then high-school minds said, "wait a minute, what about the ice age that was going to kill us all...and bring back woolly mammoth?"  But that didn't matter.  Climatologists forgot to carry the one or something, and now it was unbearable heat that was going to kill all of humanity, not bone-chilling temperatures.

Since that time climatologists, government, teachers, professors, media, and journalists have stuck with global warming as the scaremonger's choicie de jour, but since then we've had several more instances of the sky falling.  Specifically viruses that were all going to wipe us out.

First it was swine flu.
Then it was bird flu.
Then it was SARS.
Then it was MERS.
Then it was Zika.
Ebola made a short come back for a second there.
And now it's Coronavirus.

But to your average 15 year old Gen Z'er or his older Millennial brother who's still living at home, they think this is the end of the world (though wasn't that last week when Trump killed an Iranian general which was going to prompt WWIII?).

So I think I speak for most of the mature, adult American population when I say this, but

"Dear journalists, teachers, media, and government officials.  Please just shut the fuck up."

I am fully aware that the Coronavirus *might* be a real threat to the world.  It might be a real epidemic that *may* cause a bubonic plague-like death rate last seen in the 1300's.  I know we should be doing what we need to do to stop it's spreading.  But I'm sorry, you've lied to the American public so many times before to get subscriptions, viewership, political donations, government funding, or (now) clicks/traffic.  And you've cried wolf long enough that nobody is taking you seriously as they should.

At one time, the job of the media was to act as the 4 branch of government; the nervous system of a democracy to not only keep tabs on government and government officials, but to inform the American public what was going on.  But this required first and above all else a commitment to truth.  A commitment to reality.  And it's become painfully obvious over the decades that nobody in journalism, media, education or the government is interested in that. You're interested in sensationalism, ginning up fear, making mountains out of molehills, all to generate income or for political power.

Now, I know you're all journalism majors and thus incredibly stupid, but the story of "The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf" should maybe be taught at the laughable "Journalism" programs various worthless colleges and universities offer. And the jist of the story is that a little boy cried wolf all the time to the villagers so he could get attention.  Soon the villagers stopped listening because he was an idiot, attention-whoring journalism major...errr...."boy."  But one day a real coronavirus...errr...wolf showed up.  And when he cried wolf, nobody came to save him and the wolf ate the boy.

This is the real price American media, journalism, and even educational professionals are paying - your validity.  Nobody really believes you anymore.  You are no more respected than the British journalism industry which is nothing more than tabloids and the BBC.  And you are no more legitimate than "true TV" with fake shows like "The Bachelor" "Storage Wars" "Maurry Povich" or "Dr. Phil."  You predominantly peddle fiction, not investigative journalism or facts, and nobody is listening to you anymore.

If (and that's a big IF) coronavirus turns out to be a big wolf, the American media will have blood on its hands for dulling Americans' senses over the decades to the point they no longer take you seriously.  So please either develop some principles, return to real journalism, report the truth, or just shut the fuck up.

This post sponsored by a book no journalist or 

American media member would identify with.

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