***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
It may seem like a crude term, but despair porn seems the best way to describe Monday’s edition of NBC Nightly News. Despite the fact that pharmaceutical company Moderna just announced their vaccine candidate was 95 percent effective, the network still couldn’t be happy. At the same time, they cheered more devastating lockdowns while simultaneously mourning (or possibly relishing) the economic pain on families and psychological toll on kids.
Anchor Lester Holt may have put aside the old media adage “if it bleeds it leads” in favor of touting the Moderna breakthrough, but he still had to put a negative twist on it.
“As the country appears headed into a dark winter overwhelmed by a growing new wave of COVID infections, another hopeful ray of light appeared on the horizon today, a second COVID vaccine candidate, its makers say appears to be more successful than imagined,” he announced at the top of the program.
But that “hopeful ray of light” was immediately snuffed out by Holt’s next declaration.
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