CBS News couldn’t take the heat when a journalist remarked on air about the adverse impact ongoing pandemic measures, like lockdowns, school closures and masking mandates, are having on our youngsters today and how little the media seems interested in covering it.
So they just scrubbed the woman’s verboten remarks from airing.
And these fake news hucksters wonder why Donald Trump calls them the “enemy of the people”?
The Media Research Center’s Newsbusters website caught the glaring omission on Sunday, when longtime CBS reporter and the network’s chief legal correspondent, Jan Crawford, brought up concerns about children’s mental health amid the pandemic during a segment on “Face the Nation.”
The clip quickly went viral, likely because this is a common-sense issue that the vast majority of Americans ought to be highly concerned about.
However, as MCR figured out, Crawford’s comments were axed from airing on the program and can only be seen on social media videos and on the YouTube video of the full segment and read in a CBS transcript of the show.
In the now-viral clip, host Margaret Brennan asked Crawford, who was taking part in the show’s year-end reporter roundtable, her pick for the most underreported story of the year.
The reporter and mother promptly replied that “my kids hear me rant about this every day, so I might as well tell you guys.” She announced her pick would undoubtedly be “the crushing impact that our COVID policies have had on young kids and children.”
On @FaceTheNation today, my pick for the biggest underreported story of 2021– https://t.co/FHvRInIlr5
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) December 26, 2021
Noting that children are “by far the least serious risk for serious illness,” she explained that “even teenagers, you know, a healthy teenager has a one in a million chance of getting and dying from COVID, which is way lower than, you know, dying in a car wreck on a road trip.”
“But they have suffered and sacrificed the most, especially kids and underrepresented at risk communities,” she said.
She noted that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently drew attention to a concerning youth mental health crisis as suicide climbs and children, particularly from at-risk communities, are suffering.
“The risk of suicide, girl, suicide attempts among girls now up 51 percent this year, black kids nearly twice as likely as white kids to die by suicide. I mean, school closures, lockdowns, cancellation of sports. You couldn’t even go on a playground in the D.C. area without cops scurrying — getting — shooing the kids off,” she explained.
“Tremendous negative impact on kids, and it’s been an afterthought. You know, it’s hurt their dreams, their future learning, loss, risk of abuse, their mental health. And now, with our knowledge, our vaccines. If our policies don’t reflect a more measured and reasonable approach for our children, they will be paying for our generation’s decisions, the rest of their lives. And that, to me, is the greatest underreported story of the past year.”
Her colleagues nodded in agreement, and Brennan noted, “Well said and frightening” before going to reporter David Martin, who explained that his pick was going to seem “paltry” by comparison. (It was the space arms race.)
However, as Newsbusters’ Curtis Houck demonstrated in a Twitter thread, when CBS aired “Face the Nation” on Sunday, they nixed the whole segment, despite its viral appeal on social media.
Not sure how many have picked this up yet, but the dirty little secret on the Jan Crawford clip from CBS's Face the Nation yesterday — it DIDN'T even air during the show.
FTN has done a segment for at least a year or two about undercovered stories, but didn't make the air.
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 27, 2021
According to the roundtable transcript, Weijia Jiang says "we'll see" and then it's supposed to move to Brennan asking Crawford for an "underreported stor[y]," but Brennan instead cuts to a commercial.
Afterward, it skips ahead to 2022 predictions. pic.twitter.com/vcBbDOYDD0
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 27, 2021
So … CBS decided not to cover their own reporters’ picks for most underreported stories? I struggle to formulate the words to describe just how ironic this is.
This conspicuously selective editing is also depressing and truly chilling; regardless of what one’s opinion is on measures to combat the pandemic, we ought to be able to discuss the very real and tangible impact school closures and masking requirements have had on children.
What on earth could have possibly motivated CBS editors to leave this segment on the cutting room floor?
Children are our most precious treasure as a nation, and while statistically least likely to both experience complications from and transmit the virus, so many of them have missed out on nearly two full years of formative instruction and life experience in the classroom, on the playground and around their friends and extended family members.
Whether we like it or not, this is the reality of pandemic-era childhood in America, and it does our children absolutely no favors to refuse to address this for the sake of maintaining a narrative.
In fact, it’s absolutely sick.
Children are not political props. They are our legacy, our future and our primary responsibility as a country and a people.
For too long, they’ve been thrown out on the front lines of the culture war while their most imperative needs are ignored. Children need stability.
They need engaged adults in their lives to create healthy, safe environments in which they can thrive and grow and learn to be compassionate, intelligent, socially competent adults.
They need grownup minds to help them confront and cope with the regular fears of childhood, all the more so to maintain a sense of calm and regularity. They need reliable adults to provide sufficient human contact to help their little, vulnerable minds live bravely through this incredibly unstable period of history.
Yet the grownup minds are trying to bury the fact that the children are suffering in the conditions we’ve created for them.
This is exactly why it is apt to describe the fake news media as the “enemy of the people.”