The United States of America – leader of the free world order, the saviour of small and helpless countries, the most advanced power in the world, and an owner of many more such titles, is today reeling under an unsparing Covid-19 wave. The number of coronavirus patients in U.S. hospitals has breached 100,000, the highest level in eight months, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). As per data revealed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. COVID-19 hospitalisations have more than doubled in the past month. Over the past week, more than 500 people with COVID were admitted to hospitals each hour on an average. Despite the USA government’s massive push to vaccinate all adult Americans, 39 per cent of the US residents have not had their first dose of Covid-19 vaccines, leaving a significant portion of the population susceptible to infections. More than 77 per cent of all ICU beds are now occupied in the United States. On Thursday, the US was reported to have recorded more than 1,100 new Covid-19 deaths on a nationwide average. What’s worse, children are facing the brunt of the latest surge in infections across America. Daily new infections are averaging to around 152,000, and hospitals in Florida and some other states are beginning to face medical oxygen shortages.
Very interestingly though, American media, particularly that has a liberal ideology and slant, is trying to cover up the Covid-disaster that has struck the United States. Just for formality’s sake, every media house has run one or two, non-opinionated and rather bland reports of the Covid-19 situation in the United States, even as the focus has been on Republican-ruled states like Texas and Florida. What American media is certainly not doing is hard-hitting coverage, which holds the Biden administration responsible for the mess in which the United States finds itself right now.
Media houses like the Washington Post, the New York Times, Reuters, CNN and others – who went hammer and tongs against India and its Union government during the second wave of Covid-19 infections are, interestingly, maintaining stoic silence when it comes to holding the rulers of America accountable. It seems American media is far more concerned about the Covid-19 crisis striking all parts of the world except their own country.
American media did some pretty dirty coverage of India’s Covid-19 crisis. From marketing and earning from Indians’ misery and prying upon their private spaces at crematoriums, to even lying about floating dead bodies in the river Ganga and people burning their loves ones on the banks of rivers, to now, covering up their country’s Covid-19 situation, American media has put the journalism to shame once again.
When a publication extensively write about a topic so that it turns into a big talking point, it’s coverage.
When you do an article or two about a topic, that’s called formality.
What the western liberal media is doing cannot be called coverage. https://t.co/BKjENT5EU7
— Atul Mishra (@TheAtulMishra) August 28, 2021
Publishing one or two reports is not enough. How many “liberal” reporters have gone into even one overburdened hospital or medical facility in the United States and brought about a report from within such facilities? This was indeed the case when India was suffering earlier this year. Foreign media outlets sent their top reporters to visit Indian hospitals and market our misery to the world. Now, when karma is getting back at them, they all seem to have retired to the comforts of their studios and homes.
Read more: The death of mainstream media in the United States
American media should be covering their country’s ongoing Covid-19 crisis. Coverage certainly does not entail republishing an insipid report from a wire agency by changing its thumbnail and tweaking the headline a bit. Coverage is done by going to ground zero and bringing out the misery and realities of the situation prevalent therein. Currently, that is not happening. Coverage also involves opinion. It includes scathing indictments of the authorities’ response to the events unfolding. All of this is absent in American media’s ‘reportage’ of the Covid-crisis today.
Public health officials in the United States have said that the recent surge in Covid-19 cases is largely fuelled by the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus. More than 95 per cent of intensive care beds are currently occupied in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. All in all, the situation in the United States is grim, and American media couldn’t care less.
