WORST OF 2020: Silliest Analysis

December 25th, 2020 9:10 AM

All this week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of the year.

On Monday, we presented the most outrageous examples of journalists fawning over liberal or left-wing icons; on Tuesday we reviewed the grossest examples of the media playing politics with the pandemic; on Wednesday we examined the year’s nastiest attacks on Team Trump conservatives; and yesterday we highlighted the media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome. 

Today, we look at the silliest analysis of 2020.  

This year saw CNN’s Don Lemon compare ANTIFA/BLM rioters to the Founding Fathers at the Boston Tea Party, while CBS This Morning correspondent Vladimir Duthiers (and others) celebrated the “silver lining” of the pandemic.

 

Time to Cancel Superheroes 

“Legal procedurals and shoot-em-up action movies have long presented a skewed perception of the justice system in America, in which the police are almost always positioned as the good guys....Parents are protesting benevolent portrayals of canine cops in the children’s television show Paw Patrol....And yet what are superheroes except cops with capes who enact justice with their powers?....What’s more, given that the creators and stars of these movies have historically been white men, it’s hardly surprising that so few reckon with issues of systemic racism — let alone sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of bigotry embedded in the justice system or the inherent biases these superheroes might carry with them as they patrol the streets, or the universe.”
Time magazine staff writer Eliana Dockterman in a June 29 article.

 

Looting and Rioting Just Like The Boston Tea Party 

 

 

“Let’s not forget, if anyone’s judging this, I’m not judging this. I’m just wondering what is going on because we were supposed to figure out this experiment a long time ago. Our country was started because — this is how — the Boston Tea Party. Rioting. So do not get it twisted and think this is something that has never happened before and this is so terrible and these savages and all of that. This is how this country was started.”
— Host Don Lemon describing scenes of looting on CNN Tonight, May 30.

 

I’m Sorry Son, We Screwed It All Up for You 

“My dearest River, Against all odds you were conceived in a lighthouse, born during a pandemic and will taste just enough of Life as We Knew It to resent us when it’s gone. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we broke your sea and your sky and shortened the wings of the nightingale. I’m sorry that the Great Barrier Reef is no longer great, that we value Amazon™ more than the Amazon and that the waterfront neighborhood where you burble in my arms could be condemned by rising seas before you’re old enough for a mortgage….As you get older, this will be hard to understand. But we were under the spell of Genesis 1:28: to take dominion over every living thing. We had the strange urge to carve straight lines out of nature’s curves and were under the spell of a uniquely human force called ‘profit motive.’”
—  CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir in a letter to his newborn son as posted on CNN.com, April 25.

 

Finding the “Silver Lining” of Pandemic  

 

 

“Let’s talk to you about Italy. Obviously that country, its people have been devastated by the coronavirus. But there is a little bit of a silver lining in some of its historic cities. This is Venice...You can never see the waters because they’re so murky from all the boats. This time, now you can see the crystal-clear waters of the Venice canals. You can see fish swimming around in the canals....This is a map, a satellite map showing you the level of pollution that has gone away the past three months because of the reduction of emissions across northern Italy. So, there is a bit of a silver lining.”
— Correspondent Vladimir Duthiers on CBS This Morning, March 19.

 

Mother Nature “Hissed” At Us  

 

 

“Looking back, Mother Earth was starting to clear her throat and make herself heard. Australian bushfires were ravaging the continent. Earth had registered its highest temperatures since records began….Now that the planet has essentially hissed, ‘I will not be ignored,’ how do we confront the climate emergency?...From Shanghai to Secaucus, by circumstance and not design, a glimpse of life with fewer fossil fuels. And already the clean and quiet surroundings have found favor with wildlife.”
— Correspondent Jon Wertheim on CBS’s 60 Minutes, May 17.

 

CNN Doesn’t Seem to Understand What the Word “Peaceful” Means  

 

 

“FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS AFTER POLICE SHOOTING”
— Actual headline aired during CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez’s report aired on August 25.