Quote Originally Posted by Johnson85 View Post
People are not scared of the media, they just rightly don't trust it. Our media is garbage. Even if they weren't hardcore partisans willing to spread misinformation if it helps "their side", they are mostly stupid and even the ones that aren't stupid aren't smart enough to understand what they don't understand.

Even if we had some non-garbage media options, another problem is that we are a big country and different areas of the country need to take different precautions. Hell, different parts of different states need to take different precautions. People in New Orleans should probably be engaged in strict social distancing. People in Shreveport may be ok with more moderate social distancing. We just don't have good local media and health authorities that can credibly spread that messaging right now.
People need to learn the difference between facts and opinions/editorializing. Underlying facts with links matter, just because the writer may propose some opinions based on those facts that you disagree with doesn't change the facts. Rarely does the media outright lie about facts, but people call it #fakenews when they don't like the opinion deduced from this facts instead of actually addressing the facts themselves. It's lazy, it's ignorant, and it shows a lack of confidence in one's own intelligence to make cohesive argument against the underlying facts so they attack the messenger instead.