The Pandemic, the Media, and Restoring Trust in Science

Published June 28, 2023

The American media is biased toward negative news reporting, which resulted in a distorted view of the actual risk of COVID-19. Worse still, social media companies censored many truthful posts under the guise of misinformation. The inevitable result of this media distortion has been the destruction of the trust in American institutions and experts.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are the right public policy lessons from the pandemic, and have we learned them?
2. Has science been taken over by politics? If so, what should be done to fix that?

Additional Resources:

• Read Scott Atlas’s book A Plague upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America. Available here.
• Read “During COVID, the More Prestigious the College, the Lower the Quality of Education,” by Paul Peterson, John Schoof, and Jay Greene via The Hill. Available here.
• Watch “An Endless Summer: How COVID Has Reversed Academic Achievement,” with Macke Raymond on PolicyEd. Available here.