GUEST BLOG: Bryan Bruce – The Media and Coronavirus COV -19

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I have been watching TV news coverage of the coronavirus Cov-19 outbreak both at home and abroad and I have to say I find some of it irresponsible – often because they just tell part of the story.

For example it was recently on our nightly news that Italy had put the whole country in lockdown after the death rate from the virus rose to 4.25% which is the highest, as far as we know, in the world.

What went largely unreported was the other official figures from Italy’s national health institute which show the average age of those who have died was 81, with the majority suffering from underlying health problems. Also that an estimated 72% of all those who have died were men.

The fact is the great majority of people – especially children and young adults – who contract Cov 19 will survive.

I don’t point this out to minimise the disease or what is a very serious issue.

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We all have to do our bit to try and reduce the impact of this new virus and we need to do everything we can to keep ourselves our friends and families safe by following the advice of our Public Health experts. ( Such washing our hands regularly for 20secs , coughing or sneezing into our armpit and avoid close contact situations and so on.)

The media however have also to play their part, especially by taking care to not engender public panic .

Reporting reliable death and infection figures – yes , we need to know them but they don’t have to be delivered as if the news readers were announcing sports results.

It would also be a responsible move if News bulletins extended their headline writing approach to give sensible context and background to their attention grabbing one liners.

Yes report on toilet rolls disappearing off the supermarket shelves if really you must, but also, please, point out that we manufacture toilet paper in New Zealand so it’s not going to become the huge problem people might imagine.

Less drama and more background info from our media outlets please .

Let’s be sensible and caring . But let’s not panic.

Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.

13 COMMENTS

  1. Very true Mr Bruce but you know of course that our mainstream “news” is now infotainment with no charter for balance .
    I can’t link it on my phone but Australia’s ABC.net.au had a good article yesterday showing the photos of empty shelves were psychologically propagating the panic buying there, not just commentating it.

    We saw similar in NZ after Christchurch when we had media inciting actual moral hysteria over guns using unquestioned incorrect government statistics and no counter balance.

    Hysteria generates clicks which generates add revenue, that’s the reality, the media is not a friend to the public interest but a parasite on it.

  2. Just to be helpful for a change, for those interested can I suggest The Conversation.com (also on Facebook) as a good place to find good science based articles on this coronavirus with well parsed journalism.

  3. Sensationalism by our media is what sells papers, keeps Television companies alive. Yes people’s lives have been lost but look at the stats for cancer deaths every day, AIDS deaths worldwide every day. Bryan is right, we need ALL facts, not just sensationalism.

  5. Hear hear, let’s see the mortality tables with Covid up against influenza, tuberculosis, malaria, diseases of poverty; include death from cardiovascular disease, diabetes complications, starvation, road accidents, murders, war; show us the statistical significance of Covid deaths for all citizens taking into consideration age, demographics and medical history; show us the Covid methods of sampling and testing and the errors, timescales and costs involved, who made the kits or equipment, the QC and intra/inter laboratory comparisons, the false negative/positives and the true positives or the actual chance of having the disease and returning a positive result (if genetic testing was used state the methods, generality and test confidence given the virus hasn’t yet been sequenced), who performed the analyses and reported the results; release all correspondence between governments, health officials and stakeholders regarding the disease and the response; explain why the supposed epicentre of infection, China, is now reporting no new cases of Covid yet are still supposedly in a pandemic (are they now herd immune?); show without doubt how this virus was different to other diseases which distribute through society.

  6. FFS, lets start being a little real here. Yes there is a problem, and we should all be following common sense hygiene practices but media fueled panic is the last thing we need. As an aside, 25,000 people
    die in the world DAILY from starvation. But as pointed out by another blog, starving to death does not effect wealthy nations so is seldom mentioned by our msm repeaters.

    • 25,000 people die in the world DAILY from starvation.

      As those numbers start to sink in, the thought arises of the ‘1%’. Yes, there are a small number of individuals who have immense wealth, more than entire nations, who could change much of the world for the better, many times over, if they put their minds and intentions into doing so.

      However, compared to the thousands who die every day from hunger, from not having enough basic food to keep themselves alive (nor shelter, nor clean water, nor basic hygiene, or warmth, etc) … from their perspective, we are the ‘1%’. Even the poorest among us are not in the situations of those orphans in refugee camps, for example, let alone those who are being blown to pieces for some warmonger’s whim or satisfaction.

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