PBS science correspondent Miles O’Brien on Sunday bemoaned the media’s coverage of Ebola, criticizing Fox News in particular.
“I wish everybody could take a deep breath and take a break from trying to pull viewers in by scaring them. And that’s what we’re seeing here. It borders on irresponsibility when people get on television and start talking that way when they should know better,” he said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
O’Brien said that journalists have been hyping the Ebola outbreak and the first case in the United States just to draw in viewers.
“That’s a shame to even say that, and I get embarrassed for our brethren in journalism,” he said.
CNN host Brian Stelter then played a clip of Fox News’ Andrea Tantaros warning that Africans will “seek treatment from a witch doctor” if infected with Ebola.
“Well, we could digress into what motivated that, and perhaps the racial component of all this, the arrogance, the first world verses third world statements and implications,” O’Brien said about the clip. “It’s offensive on several levels. And it reflects a level of ignorance, which we should not allow in our media and in our discourse.”
Watch the clip via Media Matters:
The ‘ignorance’ of Fox Not Really News’ coverage is only exceeded by the ignorance of their viewership.
I wouldn’t ask Andrea Tantaros’s opinion on anything, especially something scientific.
You can imagine the Fox response before they even form the words. “The liberal media’s attempt to misinform Americans won’t deter us at Fox News from spreading the truth!”
The predictability of ignorance is truly stunning.
About time.
“It borders on irresponsibility when people get on television and start talking that way when they should know better”
That’s the slogan over at Fox: Fox News - Bordering on Irresponsibility.