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Gordon Street is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Lincoln. He also serves on the Lincoln Town Council and chairs the Lincoln Lakes Regional Democratic Committee.
“Plastic causing ‘disease and death from infancy to old age’” said a recent CBS News headline.
NBC News quoted The Lancet report: “Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognized danger to human and planetary health.”
The Guardian shared the British medical journal’s conclusion that “foetuses, infants and young children were highly susceptible to the harms associated with plastics,” increasing risks of birth defects, lung problems, childhood cancer, and future infertility.
Even Barron’s and Financial Times reported on the new review of research on plastics’ health effects, saying plastics are costing the world $1.5 trillion a year in “health related-economic losses.”
Fox News? Only one brief mention. None at all for Newsmax, Breitbart, and even the relatively respectable but conservative Wall Street Journal. I conducted a series of searches using the words “Lancet” and “plastic” both in Google and Bing and within these media’s websites and got no additional hits for this story.
In fact, the only recent Fox News post about plastics (on July 5) was headlined: “How sensationalized headlines about ‘brain plastic’ are undermining trust in safe, sustainable materials.”
So, what has Fox News been reporting on instead? Sydney Sweeney and her advertisement for American Eagle jeans. Specifically, accusations that “Libs freak out over Sweeney ad,” according to a Jesse Watters Primetime subtitle. I’m a “lib” (short for liberal) and I’m not freaking out. Are you?
The Rolling Stone pointed out Fox News mentioned the actress “at least 766 times,” drawing attention away from the Jeffery Epstein scandal. Media Matters said Fox News spent “85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney, 3 minutes talking about Epstein.” The Independent calculated Fox News covered the “‘good jeans’ ad 28 times more than Epstein this week.”
This is the media world we live in today, one with at least two completely different media realities: one for “libs” concerned about health, environment, democracy, and common sense, the other for Republicans apparently so addicted to “owning the libs” that they allow themselves to be led by media outlets that protect the president from inquiries into his relationship with a convicted sexual offender.
However, libs generally don’t treat addicts as evil but as victims. What if libs did that with Fox News Republicans? What if libs reached out and tried to help them? To see how badly their media leaders are misleading them? We couldn’t save all of them, but could we wean some off Fox News (and Newsmax and Breitbart) or even get them to quit cold turkey?
If we don’t do this, if we don’t reach across the political chasm with concern, caring, and compassion, I fear Fox News-addicted Republicans will take us down with them, and the democracy we cherish so much — not to mention our nurturing planet — could end up no more.
