It is articles written like this that show clear bias in the media. I don't know one way or another if anything strategic or nefarious was done but the article doesn't stick to reporting facts or even report sources to back up any intent of this "gap."
The opening paragraph is purely sensational and speculative:
"An astonishing pattern has emerged in Florida’s COVID-19 death tally — one that suggests the state manipulated a backlog of unrecorded fatalities, presenting more favorable death counts in the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election."
Using words like "astonishing" injects the reporter's opinion at the very beginning of the article. Then using the word "suggests" shows that the entire article is a speculation. Later on, the article even says, "Thus the state’s intent in manipulating the data remains unclear." Even here, using the word "manipulating" is meant to suggest something nefarious.
The article doesn't even include the total backlogged deaths added upon resumption of posting them. The 7 day rolling average of the daily cases reached its lowest point of the post-summer dip on 10/4. Isn't it an expected result that the 7 day rolling average of actual deaths would happen around 11/6 when it did?
The cases were increasing significantly in this pre-election time period. Wouldn't it have been a good idea to suppress the cases also by limiting testing or something? I would think an extra 2,000 cases a day would lead to a more negative perception than reporting 40 deaths instead of 70.
If the goal of this grand scheme was to influence the election, why wait to start doing it until after early voting and "absentee" voting were already well underway?
