When President Joe Biden stood in the State Dining Room on Tuesday to deliver a nationally televised address on the Omicron variant, he spoke to two groups of Americans: the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. But Biden also delivered a brief (and blunt) message to a third group of Americans: those who are profiting by promoting lies about the pandemic and vaccines.
“Look, the unvaccinated are responsible for their own choices,” Biden said. “But those choices have been fueled by dangerous misinformation on cable TV and social media. You know, these companies and personalities are making money by peddling lies and allowing misinformation that can kill their own customers and their own supporters.”
“It’s wrong, it’s immoral, and I call on the purveyors of these lies and misinformation to stop it,” Biden added. “Stop it now.”
It’s not Biden’s first time calling out misinfo. In his inaugural address, he famously vowed to work to “defend the truth and defeat the lies.” And his administration has repeatedly warned about the dangers of misinfo since. But ID’ing a problem is one thing, solving for it is another. And Biden’s pleas for dishonest people to act in good faith have not yielded any meaningful results…
The needle doesn’t move
As the hours of programming on Fox that followed the speech proved, Biden’s words had no effect. Tucker Carlson opened up his show trafficking in more anti-vaccine rhetoric and mocking the threat posed by the Omicron variant. And elsewhere in right-wing media, Biden’s demand that outlets stop pushing anti-vax rhetoric was ridiculed and used to generate more eyeballs and, thus, more profit. I noticed that stories about Biden calling out right-wing media were at the top of right-wing media sites like The Gateway Pundit.
Fox laughs at Fauci
A failure of imagination?
The marketing campaign isn’t great
Speaking about a failure of imagination: One thing that has struck me is how bad the marketing of the vaccines has been. Most of the messaging seems geared toward people who already pay attention to the news and have made up their mind one way or another. Whether it is Biden giving a White House address or Fauci doing the rounds on cable news, it’s difficult to see how these efforts are reaching non-news, persuadable audiences.
Perhaps I am unreasonable, but it is baffling to me that I can log on an app like Instagram and not be immediately bombarded with athletes, musicians, actors, and other influencers encouraging their followers to get vaccinated and boosted. And it is baffling to me why the public PSAs for the vaccines are boring and lack even a drop of creativity. These ads could be powerful and invoke all sorts of emotion, but — at least here in NYC — they simply feature the health commissioner dryly reading a script to encourage people to get a vaccine.
The pro-vaccine messaging, for lack of better words, is boring! That’s not to say that there haven’t been some exceptions to this rule. But in general, the marketing hasn’t been impressive. And I can’t imagine these local PSAs, another Biden speech, or having Fauci appear on a Sunday show for the umpteenth time is effective in convincing anyone to get a shot. It’s really time for government officials to think outside the box on how to reach new audiences…
More News
Stormy Daniels Tells a Story of Sex With Trump as He Listens in Disgust
Body of Final Victim in Baltimore Bridge Collapse Is Found
Sanitation Company Fined $649,000 for Hiring Children in Slaughterhouses