An opinion piece in the left-leaning Kansas Reflector criticizing the Sentinel and Kansas Policy Institute for our work to inform the public about a variety of COVID-related issues concluded by saying “damn their lies.” But nothing in the column written by Max McCoy, a journalism professor at Emporia State University, was shown to be false.
This isn’t the first and likely won’t be the last time their bias has been on full display.
The author didn’t even attempt to disprove anything we wrote; he mostly ranted about us daring to question government and media claims. That’s one of the tricks media uses to deceive people; when they can’t refute the facts, they attack the messenger and distort the message. Hyperbole and hysteria are used to distract readers from realizing that they can’t point to anything that’s inaccurate.
Everything we’ve written and shared with legislators is sourced to official government data and statements to expose misrepresentations by KDHE Secretary Lee Norman, Governor Laura Kelly, media, and University of Kansas researchers. It’s all data from KDHE, CDC, and county websites and it’s not ‘out of context’ as claimed; to the contrary, our work adds context so readers have more information from which to form their own opinions.
As we routinely write, COVID is a serious situation and people should take appropriate cautions. But at the same time, we cannot dismiss the serious economic, educational, and emotional consequences of government actions to mitigate COVID or the multiple attempts by government and media to mislead citizens.
It may not fit the government and media narrative of ‘do what we say, damn it,’ but people have a right to know things like:
- KDHE Secretary Lee Norman doctored a chart to give the false impression that counties with mask mandates added fewer cases than counties without mandates.
- KU researchers and CDC researchers tried to pull a similar scam, understating case growth in counties with mandates.
- Governor Kelly was twice caught misleading Kansans about COVID deaths.
- KDHE is setting cycle thresholds on COVID tests higher than recommended levels; Dr. Fauci and virologists say that that will produce ‘false positives’ – outcomes that aren’t contagious.
- State and local health officials have no interest in requiring labs to release cycle threshold data, even after Florida officials took that step.
- The COVID survival rate is 100% for kids and over 99% for most adults, but you’d never know that from media and health officials.
- 58,000 fewer Kansans had jobs in November than a year ago, which is causing tremendous economic and emotional hardship.
- Students are suffering educational loss from not being allowed to attend school in-person and the intense emotional strain is pushing some kids to commit or attempt to commit suicide.
These transgressions and serious consequences cannot be ignored — but mainstream media does so routinely.
That the Kansas Reflector and a journalism professor would criticize us for committing journalism says a lot about the depth of media bias and how future reporters are being trained.
