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Over the weekend, CNN became the latest media outlet to focus on Arkansas — specifically Arkansas’ governor and his decisions during the current pandemic. Earlier this month NPR interviewed Asa Hutchinson, and it was apparent the radio host just wanted to ask if Arkansas was going to be the last state to shut down, no matter what Gov. Hutchinson said, and explained, before the gotcha question. It wasn’t NPR’s finest hour.

The newspapers are filled with news about covid-19, the various responses to it by the various states, and predictions about the near future.

In a New York Times article, Ross Douthat notes: “In their ‘Road Map to Reopening,’ Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute and his co-authors offer several criteria for making the shift out of emergency: A ‘sustained reduction in cases for at least 14 days,’ a hospital system capable of treating coronavirus cases ‘without resorting to crisis standards of care,’ and the capacity to test and monitor every suspected viral case.

“They imagine this shift happening state by state, though you could also imagine it happening city by city. Either way there will be an inevitable patchwork, reflecting differences in both spread and containment. San Francisco may be semi-normal, while things are getting worse in Texas. Places with a terrible infection spike may reopen before places that have a gentler infection curve. Rural states will enjoy a much more normal semi-normalcy than Brooklynites or Chicagoans. There will be ‘red zones’ and ‘green zones’ all across the country, with wide differences in daily life, and much less travel than usual from one region to another.”

Sounds perfectly reasonable.

A number of reporters at this newspaper — that is, almost all the reporters at this newspaper — have also been covering covid-19 responses, including news and directives coming from the governor’s office. If you read the paper not just this weekend, but this month, you’ll note that Asa Hutchinson, with the advice and backing of his team of doctors spread throughout various agencies: (Deep breath) closed public schools, limited restaurants to takeout only, closed movie houses, closed hair salons, closed tattoo parlors, closed gyms, prohibited gatherings of more than 10 people, ordered hotels and motels to turn away recreational travelers, asked the feds to close the Buffalo River for goshsakes, closed facilities at state parks, and even said his people are considering ideas to stop and test people who are coming over the borders from Memphis to Texarkana. (Exhale)

Perhaps because of these efforts, and because Arkansas is mostly rural and lags behind major destinations such as New York and California (and New Orleans, where Mardi Gras might have contributed to its outbreak), this state is faring better than most. During his daily press conferences, the governor explains the several graphics showing the number of covid-19 cases in Arkansas. And compares those numbers to those predicted by experts a few weeks earlier. The real numbers are beating the predicted numbers, and how. Which is good news all around. So good, in fact, that the most trusted man in America, Dr. Anthony Fauci, mentioned this state’s efforts at Friday’s press briefing.

THEN CNN came out with a report over the weekend. The seven-paragraph story on cnn.com was short and to the point. Or at least to its point. The headline:

Arkansas governor defends no statewide stay-at-home order as ‘successful’

Yes, a governor who protects his state with targeted closings that seem to be working certainly should defend his actions. And just so nobody misses the point, CNN’s story pointed out — twice — that Asa Hutchinson was a Republican. The story didn’t say, well, most of the stuff we felt the need to mention above. Nothing about beating predictions or the apparent success of social distancing. The CNN report wasn’t as bad as the NPR interview, but when has that been the standard in journalism?

In every one of these TV interviews with the national press, and in almost every news story in this paper, Asa Hutchinson notes that if the situation changes, and his health experts tell him to take further steps, he will do so.

That seems to be the prudent thing to say — and do, if needed. Unless we’re missing something, the reasoning doesn’t appear to be that difficult to grasp.