Left-wing media, The New York Times published an article that pinned a coronavirus death on Fox News after one of its viewers died from a coronavirus infection. However, instead of praises, the NYT columnist received an opposite reaction as her previous tweets came back to bite her.

On Sunday’s print edition, NYT made direct jabs at Fox News writing down the title “Fake News and a Possibly Ill-Fated Trip.” However, after the massive backlash, the publication changed its online title to “A Beloved Bar Owner Was Skeptical About the Virus. Then He Took a Cruise”.

In the said NYT article, author Ginia Bellafante wrote that on March 1, bar owner, Joe Joyce, 74, along with his wife, went on a Spanish cruise despite grave warnings from his adult children, Kevin, Eddie, and Kristen from possible coronavirus infection. Confident that he had no underlying diseases, Joyce persisted in going on the said trip, and as Bellafante noted, “sees no problems.”

The writer then proceeded to make connections between Joyce and his media preference, stating that the 74-year-old watched Fox and believed the news network’s statements claiming that everything “was under control.” Bellafante added that Fox News anchor Sean Hannity also made previous statements in which he reported that Americans should have no reason to be scared, “as like, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”

On March 14, the day before the government shut down, Joyce went back to New York to work at his JJ Bubbles bar. As the situation grew more serious, Fox News immediately changed its tone. By then, the author remarked that it was already too late, as Joyce had died from a COVID-19 infection.

The problem with Bellafante’s claim is that Hannity said it on March 9, over a week since the beloved bar owner had left for his cruise trip. Even the leading man behind Trump’s coronavirus task force and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr, Anthony Fauci shared the same sentiment, claiming that “there is no reason” why people cannot travel.

However, the real piece of evidence that disproves Bellafante’s article lies in her own statements. In fact, social media pundits were able to uncover a tweet that the columnist wrote back in February.

In the said post, the writer mocked and downplayed the severity of the virus. “I fundamentally don’t understand the panic: incidence of the disease is declining in China. Virus is not deadly in vast majority of cases. Production and so on will slow down and will obviously rebound,” Bellafante wrote.

Despite their best efforts to provide a link between Hannity’s statements and Joyce’s death, the publication could not provide concrete evidence. To cover up for their faulty reporting, the NYT also added the information, hiding it as a supporting comment from Fox News, without publicly admitting that there had been an update to the story.

Even the Trump administration continued to struggle with the growing partisanship and bias in the media. On Sunday, Trump blasted another left-wing reporter. During his daily White House Press briefing, Trump told CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond that the “unfair press” had gotten in the way of the administration’s handling of the health crisis.