Jenny Beth’s Journal: Four outrageous myths surrounding Puerto Rico’s devastation debunked!
Last week, the media had been heavily covering the territory of Puerto Rico devastated by Hurricane Maria. Unsurprisingly though, the media coverage failed to reflect the facts on the ground and was needlessly focused on attacking the Trump Administration’s response.
Here are some of the myths that the mainstream media had been circulating in the past week about Puerto Rico:
1. The federal government isn’t doing anything to help the territory;
2. The federal government has not learned from or improved on anything from past natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina;
3. The government is capable of doing ‘anything’ like saving us from the grip of these disasters; and
4. Federalism is an antiquated and, most likely, an abusive holdover.
In the Washington Times, Jenny Beth debunks each of these myths:
As the head of Tea Party Patriots, an organization that routinely calls for scaling down the federal government, I may seem an unlikely champion for the federal government. But one of the reasons conservatives call for scaling down the superfluous activities of the federal government (and the sprawling growth of the federal government into our everyday lives) is that there is a necessary and proper role for the federal government – and that when government tries to do things it shouldn’t be doing, it overreaches, stretches resources, loses focus, and reduces its ability to do that which it should be doing. And in this instance, the federal government is showcasing a positive side that is almost entirely ignored by the media.
It’s unlikely you’ll hear anything remotely close to this perspective in the mainstream media anytime soon.
Once again the mainstream media is pushing its anti-Trump administration narrative and, when convenient, its anti-federal government narrative. Sadly, the media is using Puerto Rico’s slow recovery effort to do it. While the federal government is in fact doing what it possibly can to help our fellow territory, new outlets like CNN won’t report it.