In "How the Media Fame Machine Created 'Anthony Fauci,'" Joseph C. Sternberg describes how Fauci's diary from during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic reveals "a scandalous divergence between what Dr. Fauci thought in private about the origins of the virus and what he told the public--and continues to insist in public today."
Sternberg notes another "public-vs.-private distinction": in public, "Dr. Fauci presented himself as a technocratic voice of reason in contrast to a bumbling, out-of-his-depth politician. It remains part of Dr. Fauci's appeal on the political left to this day." However, "the private Dr. Fauci had a different attitude. The overall tone toward Mr. Trump in the early days of the pandemic can best be described as starstruck."
Sternberg observes, "Dr. Fauci gloats to himself about his working relationship with Mr. Trump until late in the spring." Fauci's March 31, 2020 diary entry breathlessly states, "Trump continues to become more and more enamored of me." In April 2020, Fauci's tone shifts, and Sternberg comments, "A rupture between the two may have been inevitable, given that they both demonstrate insufferable self-regard. But the Fauci diaries point to another factor: the media. Much has been made of Dr. Fauci's obsession with his own press clippings. Did this change his approach to the pandemic and to his boss, the president?"
Fauci's April 15, 2020 diary entry proudly states, "Multiple editorials (print news, Washington Post, etc.) and opinion pieces (Newsweek) written about me. Cannot keep up or even read all of them. Country needs someone to look up to in the face of Trump presidency. Interesting psychodynamics."
Sternberg concludes, "Dr. Fauci was predisposed to revel in media attention. Now he knew what he needed to do to get more of it. By amping up his antagonism to the president, the TV bookings continued and he found himself in position to befriend prominent media personalities and be courted by literary agents eager to represent a future memoir...A more reflective press corps might ask whether they merely reported the Fauci news, or created it."
In The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America," Daniel J. Boorstin describes "our arts of self-deception, how we hide reality from ourselves. One need not be a doctor to know he is sick, nor a shoemaker to feel the shoe pinch. I do not know what 'reality' really is. But somehow I do know an illusion when I see one." Boorstin asserts that the original primary role for media outlets was to report news--meaning events that have actually happened--but that with the advent of round-the-clock coverage the emphasis for media members shifted dramatically: "If he cannot find a story, then he must make one--by the questions he asks of public figures, by the surprising human interest he unfolds from some commonplace event, or by 'the news behind the news.'" Boorstin explains, "Demanding more than the world can give us, we require that something be fabricated to make up for the world's deficiency." Boorstin terms such fabrications "pseudo-events," a neologism based on the Greek word "pseudo," which means false.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I criticized the media's agenda-driven coverage:
Reporters are supposed to do research and ask questions designed to discover facts, and then report those facts. A reporter's job is not to persuade, but to inform. A commentator's job is to utilize facts to persuade the audience that a given policy or viewpoint is more logical than the opposing policy or viewpoint.
It is unfortunate that far too many reporters and commentators either do not understand the above job descriptions and/or refuse to do their jobs appropriately...
Reporters would be well advised to cultivate humility in general, and also to cultivate humility specifically regarding the many specialized fields of inquiry for which they have little to no training or expertise. After Dr. Robert Goddard wrote that it would be possible to launch a rocket that could travel to the moon, The New York Times sneered in 1920 that Dr. Goddard failed to understand "the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." A mere 49 years later, the newspaper published a retraction: "Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error."
False media reporting about scientific issues can have disastrous consequences. Outraged by the mocking media coverage of his research, Dr. Goddard spent much of his career avoiding the press. He just filed his patents and he did his rocket launches. While the mainstream American media scoffed at Dr. Goddard, others actually studied Dr. Goddard's patent filings; after a captured Nazi scientist was asked about the origins of the Nazis' deadly V-2 rockets, the scientist replied, "Why don't you ask your own Dr. Goddard? He knows better than any of us."
It has become a popular mantra to say "Follow the science," but science is properly understood as a method of inquiry, not an infallible source for one indisputable truth; it has become evident that often when a media member says "Follow the science" the reader is meant to understand this to mean "Have faith in the higher truth I am bestowing upon you." Einstein's Theory of Relativity is perhaps the most successful scientific theory of all-time, but scientists still do experiments to test its limits, so the notion that there is one scientific truth about the COVID-19 pandemic would be laughable if that notion were not so potentially threatening not only to our lives but also to the spirit of scientific inquiry.
When any media outlet tries to convince you that there is just one absolute scientific truth about a given issue--particularly if that issue is highly politicized--remember how the media treated Dr. Goddard. We would all be better off if people who do not know what they are talking about kept their minds open and their mouths shut.
In 2023, I looked back at the COVID-19 pandemic and discussed what could be learned by Following the Science, Resisting the Propaganda:
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided fascinating case studies in science, propaganda, governmental overreach, and more...
...the hypocrisy of many media outlets is blatant and disgusting. If you buy the premise that the first 500,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths are President Trump's fault, then you also have to buy the premise that the next 600,000 (and counting) U.S. COVID-19 deaths are President Biden's fault. Media outlets that just blame one President while absolving another President are not only shamelessly engaging in partisan propaganda, but they are failing to investigate the real culprit(s): it is undisputed that COVID-19 began in the Wuhan province of China, and it would be interesting to find out if it originated from a lab leak, from improper safety protocols in open markets, from gain of function research gone wrong, or from a deliberate release of a bio-weapon. It would also be interesting to find out what Fauci knew, when he knew it, and how much he profited financially by covering up our government's support of gain of function research.
Unfortunately, President Biden's blanket pardon of Fauci followed by the spectacle of Fauci invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination over 100 times when being questioned by members of Congress make it unlikely that we will find out what Fauci knew, when he knew it, and how much he profited by his actions while over 1,000,000 Americans died on his watch during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The way that many media outlets portrayed Fauci is, as Sternberg suggests, an example of creating news instead of reporting it. Media outlets depicted Fauci as the face of a resistance movement to President Trump that they hoped to create and empower, as opposed to objectively reporting the known information about COVID-19's origins and about the most effective public policies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic to protect our most vulnerable members of society (the elderly and the immunocompromised) while causing minimal disruptions to the lives of our children, to our economy, and to the overall functioning of our society.
Fauci and his media sycophants failed to perform their duties morally--if not legally as well--and they owe an apology to those who suffered (and in many cases died) as a consequence of prioritizing the lionization of Fauci over determining which policies would provide the most benefit to the public with the least risk. Also, as a society we must demand a full investigation of what caused COVID-19 and the extent to which containment efforts failed (or could be improved)--and the results of that investigation must be made public not only to ensure that those who were negligent (or worse) are brought to justice but also to ensure that the next time a pandemic or large public health crisis occurs we can learn from the mistakes that were made in 2020.
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