On Wednesday afternoon, the Media Research Center blasted out a call to action. The liberals at CNN, the group told its email subscribers, were spreading coronavirus misinformation to try to damage Donald Trump. The conservative media watchdog hoped to enlist its supporters to call and email the network and send auto-generated tweets to a handful of its on-air personalities demanding that they stop weaponizing fears over the virus.
A few hours earlier, subscribers to the same MRC email list received a message with a very different tenor: The rapidly spreading virus, they were assured, was fueling a massive financial swindle by the federal government that would soon wipe out average Americans’ retirement savings. The solution, the email added, was to buy a copy of a dubious financial-planning guide that would spell out the necessary steps to “prevent the robbery they are planning on your accounts.”
The email peddling that financial advice came from one of MRC’s advertisers, and the Virginia-based nonprofit group was sure to add that it reflected “the opinions and representations of our advertiser alone, and not necessarily the opinion or editorial positions of the Media Research Center.”
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It was nevertheless emblematic of the dual messaging that is coming from a segment of conservative media in recent weeks. Outlets that have spun their wheels of late to push back against supposed coronavirus panic and politicization are also drawing revenue from advertisers that rely on contrived financial panic to hawk investment advice, precious metals, and disaster-preparation kits.
Such advertisers are longtime mainstays of conservative media newsletters and email lists, but rarely are they presented with threats to American health and financial well-being as ubiquitous and ominous as the novel coronavirus. That’s too good an advertising opportunity to pass up—but it just so happens that the media properties to which many of these advertisers are steering revenue are trying to downplay just those sorts of doomsday predictions.
“The illness is real, and the fear is real,” conceded Joel Pollack, a Breitbart News editor, in a March 1 column on the site. “But the reality of coronavirus is not that scary.”
You would never know that from the promotional emails the company has sent out to its subscribers since then. On Tuesday, they received a “special message” from Breitbart advertiser American Hartford Gold Group. The email, designed to look like a series of news headlines, warned that, “Coronavirus Spreads: Experts Concerned With Banking System Meltdown and Cash Shortage.”
Those who clicked the link on that ad were directed to an American Hartford page advertising its own gold-centric investment guide. Featured on the page was a photo of disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly holding up a copy of that guide. “2008 Is Happening Again,” blared text right next to O’Reilly’s face. “Download Your Free Guide to Protect Yourself!”
As it happens, O’Reilly himself has joined the chorus of conservative media voices who’ve alleged that the press is whipping up an unfounded panic about the virus in an effort to damage the economy, and by extension Trump’s re-election hopes.
“The disease is being exploited politically. Trump haters want the coronavirus to adversely affect the economy so that there is a better chance a Democrat is elected,” O’Reilly complained in one recent post on his website. “The media has never—ever—been in business to help you, not since 1776. Money is agenda number one and imposing ideology is agenda number two. Both are at play with the coronavirus panic stuff.”
Readers of the popular conservative site Newsmax found similar claims in a March 6 column by conservative radio host Michael Reagan. “The ‘Chicken Little’ tone of the coronavirus coverage is enough to make us wonder if this coverage is just a different approach to the ‘news’ media’s obsession with getting rid of Trump,” Reagan wrote. “The only difference is this time instead of a thinly veiled coup attempt, the opposition media is going to try and infect President Trump’s re-election campaign.”
A few days earlier, Newsmax had blasted out an advertisement to its email list warning of widespread coronavirus infection—and urging readers to purchase survival food rations.
“The coronavirus crisis keeps getting worse and worse. The CDC just warned that the virus will ‘take a foothold’ in America and ‘we will get community-based transmission’ soon,” the email warned. “As a result of this emergency, demand for 4Patriots survival food is through the roof.”
The ad campaign was apparently successful. On Thursday, those who clicked the link in that email were greeted by a landing page on the website of 4Patriots, a disaster-preparation company, informing visitors that the food rations are all sold out.
Ironically, ads like these are just the sort of fearmongering marketing appeals that another Newsmax columnist, former prosecutor Wendy Patrick, warned about in a piece for the site that ran on the same day as Reagan’s. “In the wake of the coronavirus, marketing misinformation campaigns quickly permeated the online shopping world,” Patrick wrote. “Unscrupulous sellers, savvy to customer concerns and consumer trends, engage in fear-based marketing.”
Given the apparent contradictions in some conservative commentators’ editorial pronouncements and advertising strategies, it is perhaps to their credit that some are drawing income from marketers hyping coronavirus fears while also hyping coronavirus fears themselves. Hey, at least they’re consistent!
Glenn Beck is one such commentator. Like Newsmax, he and his website, The Blaze, have hosted email ads hawking 4Patriots’ food supplies. “It started slowly enough. Like most diseases do. A case here, a case there. Then a death. Then more cases, and deaths,” read one 4Patriots email sent to Beck’s email list in late February. “The coronavirus is turning into a nightmare.”
As it happens, though, that’s not much different in tenor from Beck’s coverage of the pandemic. He ominously teased a Blaze TV special titled “Coronavirus: The Sum of All Fears” on Wednesday evening.
“A virus that is spreading faster than anything we’ve encountered in over a hundred years. A virus that has left doctors and experts dumbfounded and left Americans scrambling for one of the most basic necessities of civilization: toilet paper,” Beck said. “We’ve been through a lot. I’ve seen and reported on a lot. But I find myself every day saying, ‘I’ve never seen this before.’”
