Everyone settle down. Welcome back to Propaganda and the Death of Media 101. Its, um, March 9, 2024. Now we were discussing the role of propaganda and the media in the re-election of Donald Trump by tying his leadership to a global pandemic. Propaganda in these cases seeks to diminish people’s view of a leader’s competence. The ultimate goal is to influence you to vote him out. The word “influenza” even comes from the Italian word for “influence.”
Okay class, let’s start by contrasting the media-induced panic of 2020 with 2009 under Obama. The first cases of the swine flu, H1N1, appeared in April 2009. By the time Obama finally declared a national emergency that fall, the CDC reported that 50 million Americans, one in six people, had been infected and 10,000 Americans had died.
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