Squelching debate will backfire, no plan to halt the exodus and other commentary
COVID journal: Squelching Debate Will Backfire
The White House “is spinning” news that the Energy Department believes COVID came from a Chinese lab, claiming there’s no “consensus” on it within the government, reports USA Today’s Ingrid Jacques. But the public “deserves to know” at least that it can debate the subject — as well as “efforts to combat the virus.” Until recently, anyone “who raised questions about the effectiveness of masks, lockdowns or school closures was labeled a science denier or a kooky right-winger,” yet new evidence suggests masks and lockdowns didn’t work and that school closures harmed kids. Measures to “protect” people from “misinformation” only wind up “erasing” trust. “There are still many unanswered questions about COVID-19, but it’s far better to admit this than force a narrative that later proves untrue.”
Libertarian: Plan Now for Population Bust
Even the “well-informed” don’t realize it, but the world’s “population growth is rapidly decelerating,” warns Bill King at RealClearPolitics, noting that the population will most likely “top out” at around 10 billion by 2080, per UN estimates. The US population, absent immigration, would begin to dip around 2035; Russia and Japan already face “looming drastic” declines. And though the drop eases demands on resources, it presents other problems. Programs like Social Security and Medicare don’t work when “the population is flat or declining” without “substantial modification,” causing “many headaches” for our children and grandchildren. “It would be great if the world could start thinking through those issues now,” but such planning isn’t “one of our strong suits.”
Liberal: How To Restore Trust in the Media
A Reuters study found that only 26% of Americans “express general trust in the news,” observes John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot, though the political divide is “stark,” with 39% on the left trusting news compared to only 14% on the right. “More than 4 in 10 Americans say they limit news consumption or avoid it altogether” — no “recipe for long-term success for the American project.” “Restoring trust in news is probably as difficult as restoring trust in government,” so the media and political elites need to take this seriously. How? “(1) Report and accept basic facts; (2) Be honest with people; (3) Acknowledge personal mistakes and good ideas coming from others; and (4) Stop freaking out over every minor political difference.”
Eye on NY: No Plan To Halt the Exodus
“Last year,” note Judith Miller and Paul Quenoy at City Journal, “the outflow from New York not only continued but accelerated.” Indeed, “the state lost more people in the first post-pandemic year than in any other year.” Why? Maybe legislative moves like December’s push for a “$40 billion tax hike on the state’s already-declining high-income population.” Or that fact that polio, “virtually eradicated in the 1950s, has been detected in all five boroughs of New York City.” Or that 67,321 people “slept in homeless shelters in the first week of 2023” while “Manhattan hotels are now home to” illegal migrants. Gov. Hochul has warned that New York needs to reverse the trend of people leaving. Yet “how she intends to do that remains unclear.”
Conservative: Fox’s 1st Amendment Defense
Fox News “has a stronger legal-constitutional case against” voting-machine companies’ defamation lawsuits “than most news coverage right now is admitting,” explains the Washington Examiner’s Quin Hillyer. Crucially: “Even for those of us emphatically on the record blasting former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was fraudulent and who have little sympathy for anyone who abetted those lies, Fox’s First Amendment claims should be respected.” Only “actual malice” counts as actionable defamation against a public figure, which an election-system company “inherently” is. And malice is “hard to prove” here, since Fox invited the companies on air. Plus, “all opinionators” are “allowed broad leeway to interpret and craft how they present that which is demonstrably newsy.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
