Friday, May 01, 2020
Headlines for May Day, 2020
Worst, Most Misleading & Funniest Headlines for May 1, 2020
*China is installing surveillance cameras outside people's front doors ... and sometimes inside their homes
The headline makes it sound like this is a general, widespread thing. They are doing this for people who are being quarantined. The article then says that China has 5 times as many surveillance cameras as the US, but fails to mention it has four times as many people.
*Matthew Pottinger faced Communist China’s intimidation as a reporter. He’s now at the White House shaping Trump’s hard line policy toward Beijing.
Communist China? Out of the most recent 50 headlines in the WaPo containing “China”, this was the only one calling it “Communist China”.
The intimidation: “I've been videotaped by government agents while I was talking to a source. I've been arrested and forced to flush my notes down a toilet to keep the police from getting them, and I've been punched in the face in a Beijing Starbucks by a government goon who was trying to keep me from investigating a Chinese company's sale of nuclear fuel to other countries.” Nobody tell this guy about Julian Assange or Ed Snowden.
And he may be a hard liner, but it’s the entire U.S. ruling class that has China in its sights, starting with Obama’s “pivot to Asia”. The idea that U.S. policy towards China is the result of one man is completely wrong.
*Trump and Pompeo need to stop making the WHO a scapegoat for their failures
WaPo in this editorial sucks you in with its pro-WHO, anti-Trump headline, but hidden beneath it is a slam on China for "concealing information". But the alleged sin it refers to is the question of whether the virus leaked from a lab (more or less discredited by now) or originated in a "wet market" in Hunan. Whatever China did or didn't reveal about that, and whatever the actual origin, it has nothing to do limiting the spread of the virus, as the WaPo (and Trump and his allies) allege.
*Trump: ‘China Wants Me To Lose Reelection’ As President Attacks Beijing’s Handling Of Coronavirus
This is without question a direct result of the Democrats’ attempt to avoid blame & attribute Clinton’s loss in 2016 to Russia. If Trump loses in 2020 it will be on him, just as Clinton’s loss in 2016 is on her. There’s no evidence Russia changed a single vote in 2016.
*Trump allies highlight new claims regarding allegations against Biden
Quoted in this article are, in order: a Business Insider article, a previous article in the Post itself, Amy Klobuchar (D), Gretchen Whitmer (D), and Mitch McConnell (R).
*Another U.S. court filing ties the Honduran president, a Trump ally, to narco-trafficking
A “Trump ally”? The entire regime (not the current President) was installed by a US-backed coup with Hillary Clinton’s blessing. If she were a President now, JOH would be a “Clinton ally”.
*52 who worked or voted in Wisconsin election have COVID-19
How many people who didn't vote (or voted by mail) have COVID-19? The article says "It remains unclear how many — if any — of those people contracted the virus at the polls", but of course just running the story tells the reader that they did.
See how Coronavirus brought Palestinians and Israelis together under one roof
An interesting story of an Israeli hotel where they house recovering Covid-19 patients together on the grounds that they can’t reinfect one another. Nothing wrong with this, if only CNN would also cover the way Israel has been systematically mistreating the Palestinians of both Gaza and the West Bank, depriving them of masks, testing supplies, etc.
Biden gave Christine Blasey Ford the ‘benefit of the doubt.’ Why not Tara Reade?
Stupidest headline ever. If it’s an accusation against you, not someone else, you know whether it’s true or not (unless you were drunk or are senile; the latter may apply here).
'A near impossibility': Experts doubt North Korea's claim of zero coronavirus cases
One Japanese newspaper [Yomiuri Shimbun, a right-wing Japanese paper] reported on March 29 that more than 100 North Korean soldiers have died due to suspected COVID-19 infection since February.
An April 18 Radio Free Asia story said North Korean officials had informed local citizens of coronavirus cases in the capital city of Pyongyang, as well as in two provinces in the northeast and southwest parts of the country.
If the COVID-19 outbreak is limited, he said, it's probably because North Korea imposed very strict measures right after the disease began spreading in China.
