There’s always something to be learned when the media criticize “the media”—a phenomenon that is rarely, if ever, to be confused with self-criticism. In the media, the expression “the media” can mean, and in fact usually does mean, nothing more than some unnamed and probably less-credentialed persons belonging to outlets lower down in the carefully calibrated hierarchy of media respectability who, if they’re not careful, will give their more elevated brethren as bad a name as their own among those untutored in making such fine discriminations among hacks. Here, for example, is the essence of a Washington Post editorial headed “The real Ebola risk is to Africa, not the United States”:
The hysteria and hype over the return to the United States of aid workers Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, both infected with the Ebola virus in Africa, has been way over the top. News and social media portrayed them as some kind of pathogenic juggernauts who might carry a horrible condition to our shores. This unthinking reaction is the opposite of what is called for. . . . With a well-developed public health infrastructure, the virus is not likely to become a contagion in the United States. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, noted over the weekend that the single most important thing that can be done to protect Americans is to stop Ebola at its source in Africa. That’s where the attention is needed.
Let us put on one side
