The Times won a Pulitzer for its COVID coverage despite a raft of misleading and outright false coverage.
The New York Times was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service in journalism as a reward for its “courageous, prescient and sweeping coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.” Here are some highlights from the last year and a half:
Partisan Performance Reviews
April 1, 2020 — Florida Governor, at Long Last, Orders Residents to Stay Home to Avoid Coronavirus
Florida’s coronavirus cases kept ballooning, especially in the dense neighborhoods of Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Hospitals in Fort Myers and Naples begged for donations of masks and other protective equipment. Young people started to die. And still, Gov. Ron DeSantis resisted. The man entrusted with keeping many of the country’s grandparents safe did not want to dictate that all Floridians had to stay at home.
April 13, 2020 — ‘Worst Is Over,’ Cuomo Says as 7 States Ally to Reopen Economy
Mr. Cuomo said on Monday, for the first time, that he believed the most horrific phase of the coronavirus outbreak may have passed. ‘I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart,’ Mr. Cuomo said at his daily briefing. ‘I believe we can start on the path to normalcy.'”
June 14, 2020 — My Front-Row View of the Cuomo Briefings
Watching him early on in the pandemic, I saw the same assured and sometimes combative politician. But as the weeks passed, and the streak continued, a more human Mr. Cuomo emerged. He spoke with empathy about the loss of life and the courage of front-line workers. He worried aloud about his family, including his mother, his three daughters, and his brother Chris Cuomo, a television anchor who contracted the coronavirus. And while the governor insisted he was merely relating news and data — if you took a drink every time he said ‘facts,’ you’d be sloshed by noon — he also pleaded for collective good will, finding some of the common-prayer poetry mastered by his father, the former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. “This diverse community of New York, people from all over the globe, different languages, we acted as one,” he said on May 30. “Many of those people gave their lives for us during that time. They gave their lives because we asked them to show up for us. And they did.” Some of this might have smacked of political grandstanding, but I thought the pleas for unity and understanding seemed genuine.
June 26, 2020 — Florida Smirked at New York’s Virus Crisis. Now It Has Its Own
In late April, as new coronavirus cases in Florida were steadily decreasing, Gov. Ron DeSantis began crowing about how his state had tamed the pandemic. He credited his decision to impose a state-specific quarantine on New York, then the epicenter of the nation’s outbreak. The move earned him praise in the White House and the ire of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. Months later, Mr. Cuomo has clearly not forgotten. “You played politics with this virus and you lost,” Mr. Cuomo said on Thursday when asked in an interview about Mr. DeSantis’s earlier boasts. With infections now rapidly spreading in Florida while they retreat in New York, the two states have come to reflect the rapidly shifting course of the coronavirus pandemic.”
August 7, 2020 — New York Is Positioned to Reopen Schools Safely, Health Experts Say
New York State, the center of the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world four months ago, is now one of the few places in the country that may be able to safely reopen schools, several public health experts said after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo gave districts permission to do so. Mr. Cuomo announced Friday that public school districts across the state could hold in-person classes this fall, even as districts in many parts of the country where cases are still rising have abandoned the idea and will continue with remote learning. In interviews, doctors, epidemiologists and other public health experts said that conditions were favorable throughout the state, including New York City, to bring children back — as long as safety precautions are in place. Some expressed concern that the effects of keeping students home were more worrisome.”
August 19, 2020 — ‘All In, All the Time’: Reopening Florida Schools Is Likened to Military Operation
Of all the ways to describe the fraught decision to reopen schools during a pandemic, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a former Navy prosecutor, chose an especially dramatic example when he compared the commitment of teachers and administrators to the resolve of Navy SEALs given the mission to go after Osama bin Laden. Just as the SEALs surmounted obstacles to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, so, too, would the Martin County school system find a way to provide parents with a meaningful choice of in-person instruction or continued distance learning — “all in, all the time,” he said, citing the leader of a local school district. He meant for the line to be inspirational. But perhaps unintentionally, Mr. DeSantis also highlighted an undeniable truth in Florida since students began returning to classrooms last week: There will be virus casualties.
December 11, 2020 — A State Scientist Questioned Florida’s Virus Data. Now Her Home’s Been Raided:
The complicated story of how a Florida data scientist responsible for managing the state’s coronavirus numbers wound up with state police agents brandishing guns in her house this week began seven long months ago, when the scientist, Rebekah D. Jones, was removed from her post at the Florida Department of Health. Ms. Jones had helped build the statistics dashboard showing how the virus was rapidly spreading in a state that had been hesitant to mandate broad restrictions. Two months in, Ms. Jones was sidelined and then fired for insubordination, a conflict that she said came to a head when she refused to manipulate data to show that rural counties were ready to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns. The specter of possible censorship by the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican allied with President Trump, exploded into the frenetic pandemic news cycle, and Ms. Jones’s defiance came to symbolize the growing questions over Florida’s handling of the pandemic.”
June 4, 2021 — Florida will no longer publish daily coronavirus reports
Florida’s dashboard was created in part by Rebekah D. Jones, a state data scientist who was fired for insubordination in May 2020, a conflict that she said came to a head when she refused to manipulate data to show that rural counties were ready to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns. The data in fact showed that the virus was rapidly spreading in a state that was hesitant to mandate broad restrictions. Ms. Jones’s firing became a flash point as Mr. DeSantis, a close ally of then-President Donald J. Trump, touted Florida’s early success in battling the virus — a victory lap that turned out to be premature at the time and led to a disastrous summer.
The Times‘ “prescient” coverage of the Cuomo–DeSantis dichotomy comes in the context of the following: As of June 16, 2021, New York State has the second-highest COVID death rate per capita in the country with 275 deaths per 100,000 residents. Florida has the 26th highest, with 174.
Moreover, while Florida required its K–12 schools to open up for in-person instruction by the end of last August, many schools in New York State are still not yet fully reopened, as state orders in New York are geared toward limiting when schools are allowed to be open, as opposed to encouraging them to do so. As late as last month, even fully vaccinated New Yorkers were forced to wear masks outdoors on school grounds.
Rebekah Jones has been not just discredited, but disgraced. As publicly available information uncovered by National Review‘s Charlie Cooke makes plain, Jones lied about Florida’s data, the nature of her job with the Department of Health, and the raid that the Times irresponsibly portrayed as a kind of political persecution.
The Risky, Unsubstantiated, Fringe Lab-Leak Theory
February 18, 2020 —Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins:
The rumor appeared shortly after the new coronavirus struck China and spread almost as quickly: that the outbreak now afflicting people around the world had been manufactured by the Chinese government. The conspiracy theory lacks evidence and has been dismissed by scientists. But it has gained an audience with the help of well-connected critics of the Chinese government such as Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist. And on Sunday, it got its biggest public boost yet. Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.”
April 30, 2020 — Trump Officials Are Said to Press Spies to Link Virus and Wuhan Labs
Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials. The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic. Some intelligence analysts are concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and that they could be used as a political weapon in an intensifying battle more than three million people. Most intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found, and scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus say that the overwhelming probability is that it leapt from animal to human in a nonlaboratory setting, as was the case with H.I.V., Ebola and SARS.
May 7, 2020 — The Daily Podcast:
Michael Barbaro, ‘Daily’ host: “And is Pompeo right? I mean, is he seeing something that you haven’t? Because from everything you’ve said so far, there is not significant intelligence that this originated in a lab in China.”
Julian Barnes, Times national security reporter: “No, there isn’t significant evidence. The intelligence agencies haven’t been able to say that the lab theory takes precedence from whether the virus was naturally created outside a lab just by a natural transmission between an animal and a human. And in fact, scientists are pretty skeptical that this came from the Wuhan lab. They believe there had to be an intermediate step from the bat viruses that were studied in the lab to another animal. And so the growing body of scientific voices is pushing against what Pompeo is saying right now.
Barbaro: “And Julian, especially given the lack of evidence, is there a risk to the United States going after China on this front, accusing them of starting it in a lab?”
Barnes: “Oh, absolutely. I mean, China controls a lot of the pharmaceutical supply chain. They are the country that makes masks and protective gear. Picking a fight with China could cause them to slow the flow of that desperately-needed equipment. And there’s also a race for a vaccine. I mean, China may get a vaccine for this coronavirus before the United States or Europe does. And what if Beijing is so angry at the Trump administration for its blaming of China that they withhold that vaccine? There is absolutely a risk in this strategy.”
Barbaro: “Well, then, so why would Republicans and the conservative media want to pick this fight?”
Barnes: “Well, remember where we are. We are in April. Tens of thousands of people are dying. The lockdown and public health measures have frozen everything. And people are blaming Trump. And his best case for re-election, a strong economy, has disappeared. So it is a way to deflect the blame from Washington and put it on China.”
The lab-leak theory is now widely believed to be just as, if not more likely than natural emergence theory — President Biden has even asked U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate its merit. Former Times science reporters Nicholas Wade and Donald McNeil have both written convincingly about its plausibility, and such conservative luminaries as Jonathan Chait and Matthew Yglesias have blasted members of the mainstream press for dismissing it out of hand.
Other Gems
–Jim Geraghty points out that the Times’ flagship COVID caseload map is a masterclass in how to deceptively present data.
-In February, the Times published a puff profile of American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, calling her “The Union Leader Who Says She Can Get Teachers Back in Schools.” The very next day, Weingarten demanded that entire schools be shut down for “cleaning” if even a single one of its attendees tested positive for coronavirus. Weingarten also endorsed Rebekah Jones’ conspiracy theory about Florida’s COVID data coverup months after it became clear that it was bunk.
-Also this February, the Times published a glowing review of the Chinese Communist Party’s pandemic response, lavishing praise on it for — among other acts — providing a Chinese pharmaceutical firm with “everything it needed” to produce a vaccine. Countries that have invested in the Chinese vaccines have seen skyrocketing caseloads. Unmentioned in the piece are the experimental treatments the CCP has foisted upon Uyghur Muslims it’s holding in concentration camps.
-The paper forced out its lead coronavirus reporter, Donald McNeil, years after clearing of him of utterly ridiculous accusations of racism.
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There can be no doubt that the Times is responsible for some important coverage of the pandemic. And for those stories — which its unmatched resources makes possible — it deserves praise. However, its newsroom’s thinly veiled ideological biases have also caused it to publish a not-insignificant number of misleading or flatly false stories over the course of the last 18 months. In the process, it has contributed to the partisan polarization of the country’s COVID response, provided cover for and praised America’s genocidal geopolitical rival, and played the useful idiot for craven political actors and conspiracy-mongerers. Unfortunately, it seems poised to learn all the wrong lessons from the experience, with its name-brand allowing it to ignore its systemic problems while still reeling in the most prestigious of accolades.