Media top headlines May 13
CNN boss Jeff Zucker defending his anchors becoming more ‘opinionated’ and ‘emotional’ round out today’s top media headlines
CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's excessive guidance on wearing masks Wednesday, in another example of a media institution questioning the CDC.
While CNN has frequently slammed any suggestion of deviance from CDC guidance, Gupta suggested the institution's guidance on masks wasn't following the science.
Gupta was asked by "New Day" host Brianna Keilar about Sen. Susan Collins', R-Maine, comments from a Tuesday Senate committee hearing, in which she declared she no longer considered CDC guidance to be the "gold standard."
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"There are many people who agree with her," Keilar said. "What do you think?"
"It pains me to say this, but I see where she’s coming from, Senator Collins, on this," Gupta responded, before explaining there was a concern at the beginning of the pandemic that the CDC wasn't providing scientifically based guidance, and, as a result, the country didn't react the way it should have.
Gupta added that now he thinks the country is seeing a reverse problem.
"The science is not necessarily being followed to the same extent, and as a result, we’re probably doing things that we don’t need to be doing," Gupta said. "In the end, the CDC needs to be just a science-based organization. What does the science say? You don’t need to wear a mask outside. It’s just one of these things that, again, we’ve known this for some time. We didn’t know in the beginning. We’ve all learned a lot over the past year."
He went on to say there have been negligible cases of outdoor transmission of the virus.
"If you’re vaccinated, I don’t think you need to wear a mask indoors either," Gupta said. "This is what the science is sort of showing, and I think the CDC just needs to probably say that. They’re erring on the side of caution. I get it. I think we've all been traumatized here, but I think at this point it has to be very clear what the science shows, and what you can do as a result of that."
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On Monday, the New York Times also dinged the CDC for sharing the highly misleading statistic that "less than 10 percent" of virus transmission comes outdoors. While true, the number is actually less than 1 percent and perhaps as low as 0.1 percent.
"This isn’t just a gotcha math issue. It is an example of how the C.D.C. is struggling to communicate effectively, and leaving many people confused about what’s truly risky," the Times' David Leonhardt wrote.
Current CDC mask guidance calls for those who've been fully vaccinated to continue wearing a mask when indoors in a public setting and when gathering indoors with unvaccinated people from more than one other household, but not when gathering with just one other household.
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The current mask guidance also calls for those who are fully vaccinated to continue wearing a mask outdoors when at venues or in a crowded setting, but not otherwise.