The swine flu pandemic is “considerably less lethal” than feared, chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson says. BBC News
Remember how swine flu was going to kill us all, and that it was probably the most lethal disease since smallpox (TM the fearmongering media)? Back in early July, you couldn’t move for newspaper front pages heralding the coming of the apocalypse in form of a slight mutation of the seasonal flu virus.
I wrote a shitload of posts on it at the time, generally critical of the media’s reaction to the disease and highlighting the fact that it was no worse than any other year’s seasonal flu. A particular bugbear for me was the fact that curable and preventable diseases such as malaria, which kill many thousands times more each year, are not covered by the media at all.
“[I]t’s a tragedy that there were a couple of deaths related to swine flu yesterday here in the UK, but does it really need frontpage treatment from practically every newspaper today?”, I wrote in July, accompanying a graph which showed that there had been an ever so slight spike of flu-like symptoms reported to doctors. Somehow, this slight upturn was frontpage news.
Today’s graph is a lot more interesting. Yes, there were a few deaths in July as the new strain of flu hit British shores, and it has been relatively constant since then. But there was a big, big upswing in November.
Look at the graph: in the first 5 months of H1N1 in Britain, we had around 135 deaths. In November alone, there were around 120.
How is this not fucking news?!?!?! If every single individual death in July merited days on end of front page media coverage and speculation (although when these deaths were subsequently proven to be unrelated to swine flu, the coverage only hit page eleventy…), how come an average of four deaths a day generated no coverage whatsoever?!
I’m a media fiend; I read ridiculous amounts of news every day across most of the British newspaper and BBC websites, yet I genuinely cannot remember a mention of swine flu at all over the last few months. And yet the death rate has soared, in relative terms.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful example of a news cycle at work. Swine flu was a big story in July. Now, when it is actually more prevalent and seemingly having a greater effect, newspapers don’t care. And why don’t they care?
It’s because the other newspapers and media don’t care. All it will take is one front page on the Sun or the Daily Mail and swine flu will be back on the agenda for all media.
And that’s what is depressing. The media has such power to whip up the public into a storm about something relatively minor (see also: Madeline McCann), yet nobody holds them to account later on when they are either wrong or simply ignoring news.
Swine flu was never going to be a big story, was never going to be the world-changing and potentially society-altering disease to end all diseases. But we allowed the media to get away with weeks on end of scare-mongering and sensationalism, yet when they ignore the story later we also let them get away with it.
Yes, I’m ranting once more, but I’m genuinely appalled about how the media is able to shape the public’s opinion so easily and without a sense of moral duty. It’s a money-making enterprise, after all, and following the herd is a lot easier and a lot more profitable than actually fighting the good fight.
![The swine flu pandemic is “considerably less lethal” than feared, chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson says. BBC News
Remember how swine flu was going to kill us all, and that it was probably the most lethal disease since smallpox (TM the fearmongering media)? Back in early July, you couldn’t move for newspaper front pages heralding the coming of the apocalypse in form of a slight mutation of the seasonal flu virus.
I wrote a shitload of posts on it at the time, generally critical of the media’s reaction to the disease and highlighting the fact that it was no worse than any other year’s seasonal flu. A particular bugbear for me was the fact that curable and preventable diseases such as malaria, which kill many thousands times more each year, are not covered by the media at all.
“[I]t’s a tragedy that there were a couple of deaths related to swine flu yesterday here in the UK, but does it really need frontpage treatment from practically every newspaper today?”, I wrote in July, accompanying a graph which showed that there had been an ever so slight spike of flu-like symptoms reported to doctors. Somehow, this slight upturn was frontpage news.
Today’s graph is a lot more interesting. Yes, there were a few deaths in July as the new strain of flu hit British shores, and it has been relatively constant since then. But there was a big, big upswing in November.
Look at the graph: in the first 5 months of H1N1 in Britain, we had around 135 deaths. In November alone, there were around 120.
How is this not fucking news?!?!?! If every single individual death in July merited days on end of front page media coverage and speculation (although when these deaths were subsequently proven to be unrelated to swine flu, the coverage only hit page eleventy…), how come an average of four deaths a day generated no coverage whatsoever?!
I’m a media fiend; I read ridiculous amounts of news every day across most of the British newspaper and BBC websites, yet I genuinely cannot remember a mention of swine flu at all over the last few months. And yet the death rate has soared, in relative terms.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful example of a news cycle at work. Swine flu was a big story in July. Now, when it is actually more prevalent and seemingly having a greater effect, newspapers don’t care. And why don’t they care?
It’s because the other newspapers and media don’t care. All it will take is one front page on the Sun or the Daily Mail and swine flu will be back on the agenda for all media.
And that’s what is depressing. The media has such power to whip up the public into a storm about something relatively minor (see also: Madeline McCann), yet nobody holds them to account later on when they are either wrong or simply ignoring news.
Swine flu was never going to be a big story, was never going to be the world-changing and potentially society-altering disease to end all diseases. But we allowed the media to get away with weeks on end of scare-mongering and sensationalism, yet when they ignore the story later we also let them get away with it.
Yes, I’m ranting once more, but I’m genuinely appalled about how the media is able to shape the public’s opinion so easily and without a sense of moral duty. It’s a money-making enterprise, after all, and following the herd is a lot easier and a lot more profitable than actually fighting the good fight.](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kugq8bcAFP1qz6jquo1_500.png)
