A reporter asked me today why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus. I tried to explain that one of the dangerous consequences of having a totally dishonest left wing news media was that most Americans discounted their hysteria as phony. – Newt Gingrich

This sample of duplicity and distraction, from a familiar Fox News Channel contributor, is classic Gingrich. The first sentence presents an issue raised by a reporter: “why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus.” The second sentence goes completely off the rails. It’s a clinic on how Trump and Trump apologists obfuscate, distort, and deceive.

“I tried to explain,” begins Gingrich, the ever-tolerant professor offering instruction. Well, not exactly. Instead, in an act of misdirection, he hurls incendiary language, attacking media outfits seeking to inform the public, while completely ignoring the explanation in plain sight.

The issue is why conservatives have been ‘skeptical.’ Polling clearly demonstrates that there has been a persistent reluctance on the right to accept well-established facts. It is hardly true that “most Americans” discounted accurate reports of the threat from the sources where they get their news. A majority of Democrats and independents (who together outnumber Republicans) have taken the reports as credible. We believed what we heard and saw on cable and broadcast television and what we read in newspapers and online. It is a minority of Americans – base Republicans, Donald Trump’s most intense followers – who have been skeptical of the scientific and medical reporting on the coronavirus.

Why were conservatives – grassroots enthusiasts of Donald Trump – so thoroughly misinformed about coronavirus?

• Because Donald Trump has been spinning lies and diminishing the threat since January. (As recently as a week ago, Trump was saying, “Relax, we’re doing great.”)
• Because Fox News Channel, talk radio, the whole conservative media universe, and all the folks (Gingrich, Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingraham, among many others) that traffic in that ideological messaging and Republican talking points, rather than truth and facts, were amplifying Trump’s bunkum.
• Because conservatives believed Trump, FNC, elected Republicans, et al., that’s why.

CNN and NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post (to highlight a few of Trump’s bugbears), while fallible, share a journalistic mission: to find the facts and accurately report them. Since the news business is competitive, they seek to get it right, because – otherwise – their errors will be exposed by other mainstream news outlets. They will lose credibility among viewers and readers who wish to know what’s going on. We can say the same thing about scientists, medical researchers, and doctors: while they make mistakes, they try to get it right.

Conservative media do not embrace this journalistic mission (or the ethos of science) to inform accurately. Their job, in the conservative media ecosystem, is to bolster faith in their leader, to cast doubt on facts that might undermine that faith, and to attack and disparage anyone who contradicts the message of the day.

Gingrich, who changed the Republican Party, the Congress, and finally the country, by teaching other Republicans to insult, denigrate, and slander Democrats, introduced an era in American politics where one party (the GOP) has made the other party the enemy, where Democrats’ views are so far beyond the pale they deserve only contempt. Part of this project was to undermine independent (“totally dishonest left wing”) sources of information (from journalists, government agencies, scientists, and medical authorities, among others), whenever or wherever that information challenged conservative messaging.

In Adam Serwer’s words (“Donald Trump’s Cult of Personality Did This“):

Gingrich’s attempted indictment of the mainstream press is a backhanded acknowledgment that the conservative media do not conceive of their job as informing the public.

. . .

Fox News told its audience that the coronavirus was a minor problem their heroic leader was quickly resolving, while quietly having its staff follow the very precautions its hosts were ridiculing on air. The mainstream press didn’t force Fox News to do that.

Gingrich, offering pronouncements from Italy, separated himself from the skepticism of American conservatives, but he has had a staring role in bolstering the conservative media universe that has deliberately deceived its audience and in destroying confidence in independent reporting and inquiry that has created that audience. These conservative achievements, not mainstream media reporting, are responsible for the “dangerous consequences” he references.

Gingrich’s tweet presents a phony explanation for why conservative viewers and readers are sadly misinformed about a grave threat to public health.