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Comment by covidthrow | Hacker News Reader

I can't judge your cynicism, but I can say it's quite suspect that media outlets—apparently—behaved as the mouthpiece of the state:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145446

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Why is it suspect? It's huge news, and will affect businesses, events, weddings, vacation, personal life for the millions of people who have still been taking public health and the CDC seriously. It's news. And I don't think it's surprising that they would have the scoop around the same time.

It’s not that it is all over the news nor that they all had the news at roughly the same time; it’s that they apparently released news saying the CDC said so before the CDC actually publicly said so.

Press releases are issued in embargo constantly; this is not new or surprising. Every single press release we issued was embargo’d until a certain time, when basically everyone covered it at once.

Also, it's worth noting that this is usually done with good intentions: News outlets are highly incentivized to be the first one to break any particular story, so if a press release is not embargo'd, everyone will rush as fast as possible (on the order of minutes) to make it into a news alert. Even assuming the best possible reporter, such an article is bound to be poorly researched and edited because it is being rushed out. By putting a press release under a few hours of embargo, news outlets get a bit more time to prepare their coverage before it goes live.

(Please don't reply with specific examples where this standard is not upheld. I'm clearly not arguing that this strategy is 100% effective.)

The CDC has no authority regarding the masking of either vaccinated or unvaccinated people. Its guidelines may influence state response, but they do not supercede or even augment them. Yet they have been treated as supreme authority by many, as you well point out.

I understand the importance of unified messaging, please don't get me wrong. But the media has acted as the mouthpiece of the state for years, and this is yet another example of that.

Why might this be harmful? Can you conceive of why such marriage between the state and the press may not be in the best interest of the people?

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