NBC News reported that pandemic experts and past officials who oversaw responses to disease outbreaks say Trump’s staff cuts are “likely to hamper the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus.” But Americans who read print copies of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times would not have been sufficiently informed about this aspect of how Trump has weakened America’s defenses to coronavirus.

Media Matters reviewed print articles from those newspapers over the past two weeks for mentions of the Trump administration’s response to the outbreak of novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. Of 38 articles, only eight -- or 21% -- mentioned the lack of a pandemic response team in the NSC/DHS: Four in The New York Times, two in The Washington Post, and two in the Los Angeles Times. The Wall Street Journal and USA Today made no mention of Trump’s firings.