New York-based corporate media elites have flown into hysterics this week over Canadian wildfires creating a blanket of hazardous air over the Northeast United States. The ongoing wildfire health crisis is the focus of hourly updates, with articles fretting over everything from the poor air quality’s impact on “mental health” to the cancellation of Broadway shows.
Yet these same outlets, along with U.S. government officials like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, shamefully either ignored or downplayed the arguably more serious health crisis caused by February’s fiery derailment of a freight train along the Ohio-Pennsylvania line in East Palestine. The derailment and the subsequent decision to set the spilled chemicals on fire created a hazardous mushroom cloud over the area, impacting residents’ health and livelihoods to this day.
CNN senior national correspondent Miguel Marquez dismissed residents’ frustrations with the Biden administration’s nonchalance about the disaster by characterizing the area as “hardcore Trump country.”
The New York Times’ “misinformation and disinformation” reporter Stuart Thompson tried to downplay the disaster by straw-manning concerns about the chemical spill as “wild speculation” from conservatives. “For many commentators from across the political spectrum, the speculation has gone far beyond known facts,” Thompson wrote in an article published in February. “Right-wing commentators have been particularly critical, using the crisis to sow distrust about government agencies and suggest that the damage could be irreparable.”
Media Matters for America was willing to admit that “national television coverage of this story has been minimal,” yet slammed the few commentators who were drawing attention to East Palestine. “Right-wing
