{"id":3533,"date":"2020-12-23T07:52:29","date_gmt":"2020-12-23T07:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=142559"},"modified":"2020-12-23T07:52:29","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T07:52:29","slug":"helping-the-nyt-understand-its-own-reporting-china-was-not-the-cause-of-the-worldwide-spread-of-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/23\/helping-the-nyt-understand-its-own-reporting-china-was-not-the-cause-of-the-worldwide-spread-of-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping the NYT Understand Its Own Reporting: China Was not the Cause of the Worldwide Spread of Coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n

The New York Times had a very interesting piece<\/a> on efforts by China\u2019s government to conceal and downplay the threat posed by the coronavirus. The piece reports on a number of Chinese government documents and directives that sought to minimize the threat posed by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

However the paper seriously misrepresents the meaning of its research, telling readers:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt may never be clear whether a freer flow of information from China would have prevented the outbreak from morphing into a raging global health calamity. But the documents indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe \u2014 and the authorities more capable \u2014 as the rest of the world was watching.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The pandemic had already spread to Europe<\/a> before the end of December. There is nothing in the NYT\u2019s piece indicating that the Chinese government had a clear understanding of the nature of the coronavirus before the beginning of January. The documents referred to in the piece were drafted in January or even February. This means that the spread of the pandemic to Europe preceded any efforts by China\u2019s government\u2019s to minimize the threat posed by the pandemic, therefore there is nothing here to suggest that a freer flow of information would have prevented the coronavirus from becoming a worldwide pandemic.<\/p>\n

This note originally appeared on Dean Baker\u2019s Beat the Press<\/a> blog.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times had a very interesting piece on efforts by China\u2019s government to conceal and downplay the threat posed by the coronavirus. The piece reports on\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3534,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions\/3534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}