Fauci 1, Acosta 0
CNN newsman Jim Acosta, President Donald Trump's nemesis, thought he had decked up the question of the year last week. Democrats who were listening might have hoped it could be a campaign narrative in the fall - that the president's early downplaying of the coronavirus was consequential.
Could the United States have prevented more deaths, Acosta asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, by acting to mitigate the virus sooner with social distancing guidelines?
"If there was no virus in the background, there was nothing to mitigate," he said. "If there was a virus there ... then the answer to your question is probably yes," he said.
"The only trouble with that," Fauci added, "is that whenever you come out and say something like that, it always becomes almost a soundbite that gets taken out of context."
Both Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the task force, and Fauci said it was unclear precisely when the virus was infecting people in the United States.
"In a perfect world, it would have been nice to know what was going on there, and we didn't," he said. "But I believe, Jim, that we acted very, very early in that."
And Acosta was foiled in his effort.
Picking favorites
In late March, a former staffer for then-Sen. Joe Biden said he sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s, but ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and NBC didn't air a word about it.
The Biden presidential campaign has denied the incident happened but said it supported women's right to tell their stories.
The former staffer, Tara Reade, said the incident took place when the then-Delaware senator asked her to bring his gym bag into his office. She was previously one of several women who accused him of being too familiar with them.
Biden is only running for president of the United States, but compare the networks' response with that of the accusation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2018. In the 12 days following the report by a woman who said Kavanaugh assaulted her at a high school party - a charge that none of the five witnesses the woman named would confirm - ABC, CBS and NBC - offered a combined 305 minutes of coverage.
As of late late week, in the time since the accusation of Biden was made, three of the broadcast and cable news networks interviewed Biden - including a one-hour town hall - and the question was never asked.
No, Reade, the accuser has not become a Republican and is trying to boost Trump. Indeed, she says she was deeply conflicted about coming forward but wanted the truth to come out.
But the left-leaning networks are unwilling to offer that chance.
Pillow talk
The national media went ballistic last week when President Donald Trump invited MyPillow manufacturer Mike Lindell to one of the daily White House coronavirus briefings. Lindell was there because his company - makers of pillows and sheets - was going to temporarily make face masks for medical personnel during the pandemic.
Lindell, in addition to talking about what his company was going to do, suggested the nation had turned its back on God and should read the Bible. That's what set off the media, but one media member did more than immaturely rant and rave over the MyPillow talk.
Adam Klasfield of Courthouse News took time to run down every scrap of negative news about Lindell and his company and posted it on Twitter. He also included the fact Lindell had given to Trump's campaign. But that wasn't enough.
He's also seeking the public's help for more dirt, posting: "Help me investigate: Are you a consumer who sued MyPillow for false advertising? Do you know any info about the terms of its mask-making deals, with what parties? Are you a hospital happy about or concerned with the product?"
Klasfield's request got blasted on Twitter, so much so that he came back with an addendum saying people also could reach out to him with reasons the MyPillow deal is a good one.
Media 'Nowhere Man'
Singer Sean Lennon, son of the late Beatle John Lennon and Yoko Ono, is one of few in the entertainment field to take on the media for their hypocrisy on the coronavirus and its origins.
"Been listening to 'respectable' journalists quoting CCP (Chinese Community Party) official numbers for months without doubt or hesitation," he tweeted last week. "Calling it the Wuhan Virus but only days later telling ppl who say it's from China they're racist. The official media have lost their legitimacy."
Lennon later took umbrage at a Bloomberg News "breaking news" item that said the "U.S. intelligence community" had discovered "China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country."
"Excuse me how the fudge is this breaking news?" he tweeted. "And why do we need U.S. 'Intelligence' to tell us what we all already know?"