Life as a journalist in Alabama must be hard. All polling indicates people don’t trust you. A lot of this isn’t your fault.
Nationally, the news media is overwhelmingly liberal, biased and, generally, terrible.
Locally, the politics of the state are center-right and the media is far-left, but this can mostly be masked through coverage of local events, blood and guts, and sports.
But the political/hard news media in Alabama is impossible to understand. The utter disdain for the readers and their thoughts on the subject matter is so obvious and clear that no one who reads a majority of the print media in the state would believe these people are trying to speak to them. The tone says the reporters hate them, and the feeling is mutual.
There is an ongoing attempt to take whatever these reporters see on CNN and MSNBC and come up with a local angle to maybe get Rachel Maddow’s attention and a coveted “attaboy” from their heroes.
A perfect example is some of the latest “reporting” by The Anniston Star’s Tim Lockette.
Alabamians are clearly practicing proper social distancing.
The projections from various entities have moved from 25,000 dead in Alabama to as low as 431, thank God.
Now, before we go any further, social distancing was accepted as part of these models. The reason for the drop was the data changed. When April 1 came and the calamitous events of overrun hospitals didn’t occur, the models had to change.
The numbers dropped, the overrunning of hospitals has been averted and it is now time to start planning for Alabama to go back to work.
But when it came time to report on the social distancing of Anniston’s citizens, Lockette decided to take on the role of the whiny tattle-tale who wants Mrs. Maddow to know that he was a good boy and wasn’t running in the halls like these other animals.
The Edward R. Murrow of Anniston starts his sad performance by admitting that all the evidence indicates that Calhoun County is practicing social distancing and shutting down life to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
[T]raffic accidents are down. Anniston police have responded to four wrecks since the shelter-in-place order took effect Saturday. Over the same dates in 2019 there were 15.
“Traffic is greatly, greatly reduced,” said Webb, who is in charge of traffic enforcement for the Police Department.
But this isn’t good enough, because Lockette has a predetermined narrative. He’s going to get there eventually — and a bunch of silly facts are not gonna get in his way.
Lockette’s keyboard types out, “Some drive with the top down.”
Tops down!? People are driving on a nice day with the top down?
Did Lockette call the World Health Organization, CDC and local police to warn them of this? We all know convertibles with tops down were the main spreader of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China.
Lockette dutifully bemoans, “Parking lots at hardware stores, grocery stores and pharmacies seem as full as they would be on any workday.”
Why, you ask, Tim?
Because everything else is closed, and those stores and pharmacies have shortened their hours? Because people have to eat and get medicine?
Does he want these grocery stores closed? Probably.
Has Lockette walked inside one of these stores lately?
If he did, he would see that people are legit scared of being in the same space as others. You could walk with your arms out through an entire Wal-Mart and not touch a person.
Nevertheless, Lockette continued to lament that Calhoun County has a “C” rating from a study about traveling distance and that Highway 21 has cars on it.
Why can’t we be New York and New Orleans (New York County has an “A” rating right now after all)?
In New York and New Orleans, residents under lockdown have been tweeting photos of completely empty city streets. But in Calhoun County, the stay-at-home era looks less like martial law than like a lazy Sunday.
Yes, let’s be more like NYC and NOLA — great idea!
There are no parallels between this travel distance rating and better outcomes. None.
So, what is this about?
Guys like Lockette seem to want your lives shut down for months. It appears that very few in his profession disagree with him, which leads to garbage like this.
Not one person pulled Lockette aside and said, “Come on, man. Your article blows your entire premise up in the first three paragraphs but you just blow through it like it doesn’t matter.”
Later in the piece, he even quotes Dr. Karen Landers, the assistant state health officer for Alabama, who said she is “impressed with the amount of compliance she’s observed so far.”
But, that’s not the story.
The story is the reporter knows better than the police, public health officials, stats, reality and, most importantly, you.
This plays into the emerging narrative that we can’t possibly open the economy up anywhere because if we do, then the hospitals will really overrun with COVID-19 cases and “PEOPLE WILL DIE!”
Again, you can see this hourly on CNN and MSNBC, so The Anniston Star needs to do it as well.
These are the same people who mocked Governor Kay Ivey for saying that Alabama is not New York, Louisiana or California.
But Lockette and his colleagues in the broken Alabama media, especially its newspapers, know better. They always do.
They are rarely right and they influence no one, but boy do they try.
The only solution to all of this is forcing Tim Lockette and his ilk to shelter-in-place at home where they can’t do any more damage.
Dale Jackson is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts a talk show from 7-11 am weekdays on WVNN.
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