The Commercial Appeal

Mourn COVID losses, don’t just count them

- David Colton Special to USA Today

The counting comes easily: More Americans have died from the coronaviru­s than during the entire Vietnam War. Total U.S. fatalities would overflow Dodger Stadium. More people are infected than live in the state of Delaware. So why is the grieving so hard?

The enormity of the pandemic death toll is wrapped in a wall of silence, not connecting with our politician­s, the media nor the public. Thankful applause echoes nightly for nurses and caregivers, but there are few candleligh­t vigils for the dead; churches are shuttered; most families cannot even hold funerals.

Doesn’t our national loss deserve more than just checking the number on CNN every hour, and shaking our heads as the death toll tops 50,000, then 67,000 and beyond?

Media coverage of the death toll seems clinical and for-the-record when it needs to be somber and shared, like the sounds of John F. Kennedy’s horsedrawn caisson clambering down Pennsylvan­ia Avenue, or the tearful reading of the names on the anniversar­y of 9/11 every year.

In contrast, newsrooms today are struggling to convey just how deeply the nation has been wounded. Offering only local or selective obituaries online, in newspapers or on TV doesn’t measure up when hundreds more are dying every single day.

This surprising strategy of avoidance only deepens when President Donald Trump in his endless hours of press conference­s barely mentions the dead, looking forward instead to resuming raucous political rallies. Or when his son-in-law Jared Kushner declares that 1 million Americans infected and more than 60,000 dead is a “great success story.”

Compare that calculated stance of whistling past the graveyard to June 27, 1969, when LIFE magazine bravely published “Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam,” showing the photos of 217 of the 242 U.S. soldiers who died in a single “average” week in the late 1960s.

LIFE’S decision to print the names and faces of fallen soldiers was bold and unpreceden­ted. And like the 57,939 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall that followed 13 years later, LIFE’S editorial embrace of the human cost drew outcries from hawks even as it helped turn public opinion against the war.

The magazine’s yearbook approach was “not just numbering, not just a list of names, but a picture of each one of these people, it had an incredible impact,” Hal Buell, former photo chief for the Associated Press, told The Washington Post on the anniversar­y of LIFE’S issue last year.

Also compare today’s at-a-distance approach to The New York Times’ “Portraits of Grief” in 2002 and beyond, an earnest and ambitious decision to print obituaries of the almost 3,000 who died on 9/11, no matter how long it took.

The Times acknowledg­es that a full accounting of the deaths this time is near impossible, but has launched a “Those We’ve Lost” series by an expanded team of obituary reporters.

“The purpose was to convey the human toll of COVID-19 by putting faces and names to the growing numbers of the dead, and to portray them in all of their variety,’’ wrote Daniel J. Wakin, an obituary editor at the Times.

All newsrooms know that obituaries have extraordin­arily high readership. Highlighti­ng each of the victims of an average commercial airline crash, for example, affects readers and reporters like nothing else in journalism.

Admittedly, dealing with obituaries in the tens of thousands is beyond daunting.

Names are being released sporadical­ly, if at all (some coroners in Florida are being advised not to report figures). Many victims are very elderly; not all nursing homes or hospitals release names and reporters often must rely on families for informatio­n.

The logistics are dizzying.

When I was an editor at USA TODAY we once squeezed 100 mug shots onto a single page. (We did it to show each senator’s vote during the 52-48 confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991).

By that measure, displaying small photos of 70,000 coronaviru­s victims 100 to a page would require a special section of 700 pages, a thick tombstone of tragedy.

To compile anything approachin­g a definitive list of the dead would likely require a combined effort of federal, state and local health agencies, and cooperatio­n by national and local media outlets across the nation.

With newsroom employment cut by 50% since 2004, it is a challenge unpreceden­ted in the news business.

But it is an effort, community by stricken community, worthy of the disaster facing us.

One of the media’s challenges in a post-pandemic age will be to reveal many more of the faces behind the cold statistics.

David Colton is a former executive editor at USA TODAY.

 ?? CORY LUM/USAT ?? Veteran at the Vietnam memorial on June 8, 2000.
CORY LUM/USAT Veteran at the Vietnam memorial on June 8, 2000.

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