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WASHINGTON The White House moved on Thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearances with the office of Vice President Mike Pence, according to several officials familiar with the new approach.

But on a day that the White House sought to display a more disciplined strategy to the administrations communications about the virus, Mr. Trump used an evening event honoring African-American History Month to rail against the news media, claiming it is overstating the threat, and to congratulate himself for keeping the number of cases low.

I think its an incredible achievement what our countrys done, Mr. Trump said, noting that he had moved quickly to ban travel from China after the emergence of the virus. Even though a total of 60 people infected with the coronavirus are in the United States, he ignored all but the 15 who did not initially contract it overseas.

Fifteen people is almost, I would say, a miracle, the president bragged.

The comments came just a few hours after Mr. Pence convened a meeting of the coronavirus task force composed of some of the nations top public health officials. The vice president made it clear that they would report to him.

Im leading the task force, Mr. Pence told reporters at the Department of Health and Human Services, even as he promised to rely on the guidance of experts.

Mr. Trump announced Wednesday evening that Mr. Pence would coordinate the governments response to the public health threat while playing down the immediate danger from the virus that is spreading rapidly across the globe.

Officials insist Mr. Pences goal is not to control what experts and other officials say, but to make sure their efforts are coordinated, after days of confusion with various administration officials making contradictory statements on television.

But the attempt to demonstrate a unified administration voice was undercut early in the day, when Mr. Pence said that he had selected Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the director of the United States effort to combat H.I.V. and AIDS, to serve as the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House, enlisting an experienced scientist and physician to address the potential spread of the virus.

The announcements of the roles of the vice president and Dr. Birx were intended to show that Mr. Trump and those around him are taking seriously the potential threat to the health of Americans. Aides said the president wanted governors and members of Congress to have a single point person to communicate with, eliminating any jockeying for power in a decentralized situation.

Updated Feb. 29, 2020

But Dr. Birx is now the third person to have been designated as the administrations primary coronavirus official, along with Mr. Pence and Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services.

Mr. Trump said Wednesday that Mike is going to be in charge, and Mike will report back to me. Mr. Pence said it would be Dr. Birx. Mr. Azar, for his part, remains the chairman of the governments coronavirus task force.

The vice presidents move to control the messaging about coronavirus appeared to be aimed at preventing the kind of conflicting statements that have plagued the administrations response.

The latest instance occurred Thursday evening, when the president said that the virus could get worse or better in the days and weeks ahead, but that nobody knows, contradicting Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, one of the countrys leading experts on viruses and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

At the meeting with Mr. Pence on Thursday, Dr. Fauci described the seriousness of the public health threat facing Americans, saying that this virus has adapted extremely well to human species and noting that it appeared to have a higher mortality rate than influenza.

We are dealing with a serious virus, Dr. Fauci said.

Dr. Fauci has told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance.

The new White House approach came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged Thursday that a California woman with coronavirus was made to wait days before she was tested for an infection because of the agencys restrictive criteria.

And despite Mr. Trumps efforts to calm jittery investors, stock markets plunged again Thursday. The S&P 500 fell 4.4 percent, the worst single-day slide for the market since August 2011 and leaving it 10 percent lower than it was a week earlier.

The presidents decision to appoint Mr. Pence to lead the coronavirus response came after several days in which his aides grappled with whether to name a coronavirus czar.

Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he was pleased with Mr. Azars performance, calling the team that he has led totally brilliant. But White House aides, led by Mick Mulvaney, the presidents acting chief of staff, had debated for days whether the administration needed a point person to be the face of the response.

The decision to put Mr. Pence in charge was made on Wednesday after the president told some people that the vice president did not have anything else to do, according to people familiar with Mr. Trumps comments.

Dr. Birx has spent more than three decades working on H.I.V./AIDS immunology, vaccine research and global health, according to the White House, which said in a statement that she would bring her infectious disease, immunologic, vaccine research and interagency coordinating capacity to this position.

The presidents selection of Mr. Pence and the decision to name Dr. Birx as the coordinator for the response further erodes Mr. Azars traditional role as the nations top health official in charge of directing the governments response to a medical crisis. Mr. Trump has told people that he considers Mr. Azar to be too alarmist about the virus.

Mr. Azar denied reports that he had not been consulted about the decision to bring in Mr. Pence before the presidents announcement Wednesday evening. He told lawmakers on Thursday during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that when he was informed of Mr. Pences selection, I said, quote, thats genius.

Officials also announced that Mr. Pence was expanding the coronavirus task force to include key administration officials, including Dr. Jerome M. Adams, the surgeon general, as well as the presidents top two economic advisers, Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary. The task force is made up of more than a dozen top administration officials and cabinet secretaries.

An administration official said Thursday night that Mr. Pence had discussed the coronavirus with several governors, including Andrew Cuomo, Democrat of New York; Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas; Larry Hogan, Republican of Maryland; Pete Ricketts, Republican of Nebraska; Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington; and Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California.

The decision to bring in Mr. Pence was not without controversy.

Critics of the vice president pointed to Mr. Pences record on public health when he was the governor of Indiana as evidence that he was not the right person to lead the governments response to a health crisis. Democrats noted that Mr. Pence was blamed for aggravating a severe AIDS outbreak among intravenous drug users when he opposed calls for a clean needle exchange program on the grounds it would encourage more drug use.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she had told Mr. Pence directly that she questioned his new role given that as governor, he had slashed the public health budget in Indiana.

I spoke with the vice president this morning, made some of these concerns known to him, she said. We have always had a very candid relationship and I expressed to him the concern that I had of his being in this position.

Annie Karni and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

Originally posted here:
Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging From Health Officials - The New York Times

Administration officials held a briefing at the White House featuring Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, along with Russell T. Vought, the budget director, and Eric Ueland, the White House legislative director. After each official read off a series of prepared talking points, they took only a handful of questions from journalists.

Of the three officials, Mr. Azar went the furthest in suggesting that the United States might face a difficult next phase of the coronavirus, if it spreads. Mr. Trump has repeatedly told advisers he is concerned that Mr. Azar and others in the administration are presenting an alarmist view.

The administration has ignored or sidelined expert staff at agencies like the C.D.C. and the N.I.H., offered the public inconsistent and confusing information, and failed to provide clear leadership, said Dr. Kathleen Rest, the executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a health policy expert, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Mr. Pence went to Florida on Friday for a previously scheduled fund-raiser for the states Republican delegation, although he planned to give a briefing to Gov. Ron DeSantis while there. He also stopped by the radio broadcaster Rush Limbaughs studio to insist that the administration was not focused on politics.

Washington is always going to have a political reflexive response to things, Mr. Pence said. But were going to tune that out.

Mr. Limbaugh has been among the conservative commentators who have blamed the news media and political opponents for overemphasizing the coronavirus, which he compared to the common cold. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump, Mr. Limbaugh, who was recently given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Mr. Trump, said on his show on Monday.

That theme has been amplified by some of the presidents favorite Fox News hosts, like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, in recent days and animated Mr. Mulvaneys appearance on Friday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md.

Read more from the original source:
Trump Accuses Media and Democrats of Exaggerating Coronavirus Threat - The New York Times

A good portion of the airspace over central Japan has been reserved for the exclusive use of the U.S. military since the end of World War II, a fact that isnt widely known in Japan. Over the past several weeks, however, it has become a sudden reality to thousands of Tokyoites and residents of Kawasaki who live below new low-altitude flight paths that bring commercial aircraft in and out of Haneda Airport.

As the Asahi Shimbun outlined in a January 26 article, domestic authorities have been seeking U.S. cooperation to allow joint civilian-military use of the Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo in order to handle the expected increase in international visitors, even if it was only during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. The U.S. military, which controls Yokota, refused to even negotiate the issue, even though they allow Japans Self-Defense Forces to share the base. However, they did finally budge on the matter of the so-called Yokota airspace, which extends from the Izu Peninsula on the Pacific Ocean to Niigata Prefecture on the Japan Sea, allowing commercial flights to use special routes that go through a small portion of this airspace in order to access Haneda, but only for three hours a day. The government was relieved, but others are upset because those routes go directly over their homes.

The transport ministry said the new flights were a test that ostensibly ended a few weeks ago, but it appears they were always going to be fully implemented starting at the end of March, and there was already an earnest movement protesting the plan before the tests started. According to a Feb. 10 report in the Mainichi Shimbun, a symposium was held last December in Tokyos Shinagawa Ward, where residents expressed their fear of noise pollution and falling objects. Two of the speakers at the symposium were Kiwami Omura, a representative of a citizens group that opposes the new routes, and former Japan Airlines pilot Hiroshi Sugie, who discussed, from a technical standpoint, how dangerous the plan is.

Both men held a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan on Feb. 13 in a bid to share their misgiving about the plan with an international audience. Omura pointed out that the worldwide trend is to move airports as far from urban centers as conveniently possible, but Japan has done the opposite. Although Tokyo has a dedicated international airport in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, its considered too far away, and so for years the government has been working to move much of Naritas international capacity to Haneda, which was previously Tokyos dedicated domestic airport.

Sugie described the technical problems of landing airplanes at Haneda when approaches are made using the new flight routes, which demand a steeper angle of descent that is more difficult to pull off. One reason the transport ministry gave for the steep descent is the noise issue. A more shallow descent would probably mean a longer period of low altitude flying over larger swaths of the city.

Omura professed an inability to understand any justification for the new routes. According to the transport ministrys master plan, it wants to increase the number of Haneda flights by 39,000 a year, 11,000 of which would use the new routes depending on wind direction at the time of approach or departure, which isnt a big number. Omura doesnt see why the number of flights cant be increased using only the old flight paths, which are over the sea or unpopulated areas, especially since some airlines dont like the new routes.

Many of Omuras and Sugies points were made in the Feb. 10 Mainichi article, which also looked into the Yokota airspace issue, since any commercial aircraft that flies through it has to contend with the U.S. Air Forces flight control apparatus that mandates a certain perpendicular approach for commercial flights. The government is compromising the safety of both commercial aircraft and local residents for the sake of its security alliance with the United States. A different Mainichi article that also appeared Feb. 10 mirrored Omuras questioning of any need for the new routes: Adding 10 flights an hour at most isnt enough of a reason to justify forcing them to fly over the city, regardless of wind direction. The government has been trying for so long to reclaim some of the Yokota airspace that now that they have access to even a small bit of it they may feel they have to use it or lose it.

According to the aforementioned Asahi Shimbun article, the U.S. military demonstrates little concern for the Japanese people or their safety as shown by their use of the heliport at Hardy Barracks in the Roppongi area of Tokyo, which necessitates low-altitude helicopter flights that are normally not allowed in cities under Japans Civil Aeronautics Law. This disregard for Japanese sovereignty extends to much of the U.S. military presence, and not just in Okinawa, where it receives the most attention. On Feb. 14, Tokyo Shimbun editor Shigeru Handa, who has written extensively about security matters, appeared on the web program Democracy Times to talk about the U.S.-manufactured tilt-rotor military aircraft known as the Osprey, which has a higher-than-average accident rate. Handa says that the U.S. has five Ospreys at Yokota Air Base that practice low-altitude flights at night in an SDF zone covering five nearby prefectures, but while the SDF rarely performs drills over populated areas, the U.S. military does. In fact, Ospreys fly anywhere in Japan for training purposes and the Japanese government never objects. Whats more, U.S. military aircraft can freely use some regular commercialairports almost whenever they want.

Handa claims most major media never talk about this, so the public has little context with which to understand these new flight paths over Tokyo. They may think the skies over Japan are free, but they arent. They arent even Japanese.

Read the rest here:
Who really controls the airspace over central Japan? - The Japan Times

The stock market is swooning. Consumers are stockpiling masks and antibacterial gels. President Trumps response to a global epidemic has done little to quell fears.

In the right-wing media universe, however, the commotion over the coronavirus is hardly a crisis for the White House. Instead, its just another biased attack on a president from the usual haters.

It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, said on his syndicated program this week, dismissing the disease as a Democratic talking point.

The coronavirus is the common cold, folks, Mr. Limbaugh added, incorrectly. (The coronavirus is more deadly and more contagious than the common cold, and it can cause severe flulike symptoms.)

Viewers of the Fox News talk show Fox & Friends on Friday heard the co-host Ainsley Earhardt introduce a segment by announcing: Lets talk about the Democrats and the media with this coronavirus, and theyre making it political.

Her guest was Pete Hegseth, a Fox & Friends Weekend co-host and an on-air Trump cheerleader who doubles as an informal confidant of the president.

I dont want to say this, I dont relish the reality, Mr. Hegseth began. But you start to feel, you really do watch the Democrats, watch the media that theyre rooting for coronavirus to spread. Theyre rooting for it to grow. Theyre rooting for the problem to get worse.

Ms. Earhardt and her co-hosts, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, nodded along. Their show is the highest-rated morning program on cable news.

The losses in the stock market one of the presidents self-appointed barometers of the nations success are described as a consequence of fears deliberately spread by liberals and biased journalists, rather than a reaction by investors concerned about how the virus has affected economies around the world.

The coronavirus, from this standpoint, is compared to impeachment and the special counsels report, major news events dismissed by Trump allies as hyped-up nonevents.

That view was validated on Friday by one of the federal governments highest-ranking officials: Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff. He told conservative activists that the media focus on the coronavirus was an effort to hurt Mr. Trump.

The reason youre seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be the thing that brings down the president, Mr. Mulvaney said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. Thats what this is all about.

There is little doubt that a global health crisis suits the relentless churn of 24-hour cable news networks, no matter the ideology of their commentators. Every major news channel has devoted hundreds of hours to examining the contagion.

Inevitably, the demand for disease news can elevate pundits with relatively little expertise. Helen Branswell, who writes about global health for STAT, a health news website based in Boston, said she had heard from many unqualified people hoping to be quoted on the coronavirus.

My inbox is flooded with people trying to get me to interview people who are being passed out as experts, who really are not experts, she said.

In addition, the coverage, presented with the signature flash of cable news, has at times amplified misleading or downright false narratives about the spread of the virus.

Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, for instance, floated the possibility in a Fox News interview that the coronavirus had originated at a Chinese laboratory, a theory that scientists say lacks any evidence.

Jon Cohen, who is among the team of reporters covering the coronavirus for the magazine Science, said anyone exaggerating the likelihood that the virus had been created in a laboratory could leave viewers misinformed.

It reinforces biases people have against China, against government, against scientific research, Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Limbaugh, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Mr. Trump this month, used his radio program this week to link the virus with the Democratic presidential front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Just keep in mind where the coronavirus came from, Mr. Limbaugh told listeners. It came from a country that Bernie Sanders wants to turn the United States into a mirror image of: Communist China. (At a CNN town hall on Monday, Mr. Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, described China as an authoritarian country, becoming more and more authoritarian, adding that it had taken more people out of extreme poverty" than any other nation.)

Mr. Limbaugh also advanced a baseless claim that the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, was biased against the president because her brother is Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general who was a target of Mr. Trumps attacks.

Allies of the Trump administration often take a warlike stance toward any issue that poses a threat to the presidents reputation, adopting the language of victimhood and grievance.

Sean Hannity, at the top of his Fox News program on Thursday, attributed the worries over the coronavirus to a fear campaign led by the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party.

Theyre now sadly politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump, Mr. Hannity declared. Many on the left are now all rooting for corona to wreak havoc in the United States. Why? To score cheap, repulsive political points. (Mr. Hannity averages more than three million viewers a night, the biggest audience on cable news.)

One Hannity guest had the temerity to dissent sort of. Geraldo Rivera, a Fox News regular, agreed with Mr. Hannitys contention that Democrats had sought to arouse fear. But he told Mr. Hannity that our friend, President Trump, had not handled the situation ideally.

The president was too cool for school, Mr. Rivera said. I think it would have been better if he were more energetic, more pointed and forceful

Before he could finish his thought, he was interrupted by Mr. Hannity and another guest, the Trump loyalist Dan Bongino, who quickly rebuked his colleague.

Thats a horrible analysis, Geraldo, Mr. Bongino said.

See the article here:
Right-Wing Media Says Virus Fears Were Whipped Up to Hurt Trump - The New York Times

The courtroom often pits adversaries against each other, and that was the case in the recent Jeremy Christian trial in downtown Portland.

The competing principles in conflict? Fair trial vs. free press.

A defendant has a right to a fair trial. The media have a First Amendment right to report freely. While those rights are not inherently adversarial, they can come into conflict during high profile cases that attract extra media attention.

That was the case in the trial of Jeremy Christian, who was convicted in the killings of two men on a MAX train. The crime drew national attention, and Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht knew the trial would be packed with reporters and photographers.

Well in advance, she prepared an order outlining rules about coverage inside the courthouse. While the government cannot tell the media what to report and what not to report, courts can place restrictions on the use of things such as cellphones and laptops inside the courtroom. For the privilege of using a cellphone, which typically is forbidden, the media is restricted in how they can use phones and the cameras in the phones.

Albrecht also took the extra and welcome step of inviting interested journalists to meetings ahead of the trial to go over the rules and to answer questions. These were well attended by print, radio and television reporters and editors who had a chance to ask questions about where to put their equipment and where to station microphones and cameras.

A judge focuses on ensuring a fair trial, avoiding a mistrial and making the right decisions so an appeals court doesnt undo everything years later. The defense and prosecutors similarly are focused on their jobs.

While philosophically the media may agree they play a role in ensuring a fair trial, that rarely is front of mind for most journalists in their day to day work.

We want information, we want lots of it, and fast. We also want access, which helps provide thorough and accurate coverage, as well as compelling images. We are vigilant and outspoken if we think something is happening in secret that should be in the view of the public. And we are vigorously independent, chafing at any attempt to control or shape our journalism.

Despite all of the advance work on the Christian trial, not everything went smoothly, as is often the case when events unfold in real time and the stakes are so high.

The judge told the media she was very concerned about seating a jury. In fact, a much larger than usual pool of potential jurors was called to the courthouse for the trial.

Albrecht said she didnt want the questioning of jurors to be reported by the media. We couldnt agree to that, and voir dire, which was held in open court, was reported on.

Over our objection, the judge also did not allow The Oregonian/OregonLives reporter to sit through jury orientation, although she did release a copy of the questionnaire prospective jurors were asked to fill out. We believed the orientation should be public.

Because the requests dealt with the process of jury selection, my initial inclination was to protect juror privacy and shield jurors from invasive scrutiny, Albrecht told me. Jurors are asked to relinquish their work and personal lives for weeks at a time and endure highly emotional testimony and exhibits. It is imperative that they be able to do the important work of deciding a case without fear of recourse or reprisal.

Jurors, typically addressed by name, were instead referred to by letters and numbers. This was done both to protect jurors from possible intimidation and also for their privacy. We did not object.

Journalists sometimes organize themselves into a pool, where one reporter stands in for all. We understood a pool reporter and photographer would be able to watch the jurors visit a MAX light rail train similar to the one where the attack occurred. On the morning of the visit, we were told no media would be allowed.

The Oregonian/OregonLives attorney filed a letter of objection with the judges clerk but it was too late. The visit occurred outside of the medias presence. (We later were told that TriMet, not the judge, had said no media could attend the visit on its property.)

Albrecht noted that media requests often arise in the moment, unlike other decisions before the court. They are not raised in advance and there is usually no hearing, no authorities provided, and no briefing of the issues. Some of the requests affected the rights of the parties and there simply was not sufficient time to allow the parties to weigh in and for me to make a ruling, she said.

The biggest conflict occurred when Albrecht directed the media to not report on a witness testimony if, at days end, she had not finished. The judges decision was intended to ensure reporting about a witness testimony would occur only after the witness had finished, in order to avoid witness tampering or intimidation.

This seemed to The Oregonian/OregonLive to be an unconstitutional muzzling of the press. Any person in the courtroom that day could walk out and tweet, update Facebook or text their friends but the press could not report? Charles Hinkle, the attorney who has represented us on First Amendment issues for many years, drew up a motion and headed over to the courthouse.

For many years, I have been a member of the Bar-Press-Broadcasters Council, a volunteer group of lawyers, media, judges and other interested parties. The council is independent and helps work through these inevitable conflicts that arise during police investigations and court trials. Albrecht also has been a member of the council, and she took many steps to communicate with reporters and to be accessible when questions arose.

I can only imagine how difficult it is for a judge on a high-profile case with intense scrutiny, a volatile defendant and so much at stake (my sister, Leslie Bottomly, also is a Multnomah County judge).

These conflicts are difficult in the best of times, but journalists are loath to intervene on the morning of a stressful day in court. Yet the principle of a free press is fundamental for us, and we cannot sit by quietly and accept limits on our reporting of events that occurred in public view.

Judges can and do govern when and whether we can send information out of the courtroom on our laptops or phones. Thats the price we pay for being allowed to use phones and laptops, which by rule typically cannot be used in courtrooms. Those rules are intended to limit disruption, ensure fair trials and protect jurors and witnesses.

As Albrecht told me, The Oregon Supreme Court has said judges have broad latitude to control their courtrooms, including taking steps necessary to protect the rights of participants in judicial proceedings.

But judges cannot limit what we report once we leave the courthouse. We did not have to file our motion because, ultimately, Albrecht agreed with us after she was able to research the matter.

Its an important guarantee, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, and at the end of the day, it is the reader who benefits.

Therese Bottomly is editor and vice president of content for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her at tbottomly@oregonian.com or 503-221-8434.

Read the original post:
Letter from the Editor: When fair trial, free press rights collide - OregonLive