Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Media facing challenges in covering growing health crisis
NEW YORK — Covering the coronavirus story requires careful navigation and constant attention.
News organizations trying to responsibly report on the growing health crisis are confronted with the task of conveying its seriousness without provoking panic, keeping up with a torrent of information while much remains a mystery and continually advising readers and viewers how to stay safe.
“It’s a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, aroundthe-world story,” said Michael Slackman, assistant managing editor, international at The New York Times.
The Times maintains a live news blog about the coronavirus that is refreshed 24 hours a day, with editors in New York, London and Hong Kong dividing responsibility. The Slack channel set up by Associated Press journalists to discuss coverage among themselves and contribute to the story has more than 400 members.
The coronavirus has sickened thousands, quarantined millions and sent financial markets reeling — all while some cultural critics say the story is overblown.
“It’s hard to tell people to put something into context and to calm down when the actions being taken in many cases are very strong or unprecedented,” said Glen Nowak, director of the Grady College Center for Health and Risk Communication at the University of Georgia.
But that’s what journalists in charge of coverage say they need to do.
“We have been providing a lot of explainers, Q-andA’s, trying to lay out in clear, simple language what the symptoms are and what the disease means for people,” said Jon Fahey, health and science editor at the AP.
Fear is a natural response when people read about millions of people locked down in China, he said. Yet it’s also true that, right now, the individual risk to people is very small.
Late last week, the Times’ Vivian Wang tried to illustrate some of the complexities in writing about a disease that has struck more than 95,000 people, with a death toll over 3,200. Most people have mild symptoms — good fortune that paradoxically can make the disease harder to contain because many won’t realize they have the coronavirus, she noted.
“I keep reminding the viewers that still, based on two very large studies, the vast majority of people who get this infection are not going to get sick,” said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical correspondent. “They’re going to have a mild illness, if any, and they’re going to recover. This tends to be very reassuring to people. But I don’t want to minimize this. We’re dealing with something that is growing and becoming a legitimate pandemic.”
“Pandemic” is one of the scary-sounding words and phrases that some journalists take care about using.
Fahey said the AP avoids calling it a “deadly” disease because, for most people, it isn’t. Dr. John Torres, medical correspondent at NBC News, edits out phrases like “horrific” or “catastrophic.”
“I try not to delve too much in adjectives,” Torres said.
Nearly every day brings word of more cases, in more countries. That’s news. Yet should journalists consider the cumulative effect of a statistical drumbeat? “At some point the numbers become less meaningful,” Gupta said.
Images, too, merit careful consideration. Pictures of people wearing face masks often illustrate stories, despite evidence that the masks matter little in transmission of the virus, Nowak said.
The words and actions of journalists and other public figures send signals of their own.
CNN’s Gupta has talked about people needing to consider “social distancing” if pockets of infection build in the United States. He has revealed on the air that his own house is stocked with supplies in case his family has to remain home for any period of time.
“People could be frightened by that,” Gupta conceded. “It’s not the intent. It’s in the way that you convey these things.”