BECAUSE THE U.S. PRESS IS GARBAGE: Three professors, two from Dartmouth and one from Brown, have produced a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research titled, “Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News?” It focuses on the U.S. press, and its findings are disturbing.

Plus: “Why are ‘major’ U.S. news sources so massively more negative than their international counterparts? I think the widespread hostility toward President Trump is the obvious answer. The fact that Fox isn’t much different from its left-wing competitors probably tells us more about Fox than about the American press in general. But that isn’t the whole story. This NBER article suggests that the pessimism of major news outlets is a response to reader demand.”