Media Hype Over Coronavirus is Spreading Faster Than the Virus Itself
CNN alone has produced nearly 1,200 articles about Coronavirus and
two-thirds of the stories on Reuters' newswire were about the virus.
by Alan Macleod
March 02nd, 2020
By Alan Macleod
Fear over Covid-19, the deadly strain of novel coronavirus, appears to be
spreading even faster than the virus itself, as the subject continues to
dominate the media. CNN, for example, has produced nearly 1,200 articles
mentioning the outbreak, Fox News over 1,300. NBC News has added a
coronavirus tab to its homepage, putting it on equal footing as business,
world and sports And at the time of writing, two-thirds of the stories on
Reuters' newswire in the previous hour were on the subject, pushing other
topics to the wayside. Certainly not helping the worry has been
irresponsible clickbait reporting describing the virus as an
"uncontrollable.pandemic" and the "end of the world."
coronavirus media
Britain's Express, among other tabloids, is profiting handsomely over
coronavirus fears
Yet the worldwide focus on the coronavirus has highlighted the deep
inequalities in how some maladies are covered and others are simply ignored.
Just over 3,000 people have died after contracting the virus since the first
reported case on December 1. Over the same time period, a condition like
diarrhea typically kills around 550,000, according to the World Health
Organization - something that could easily be remedied in virtually every
case. Meanwhile, around nine million people die of hunger or hunger-related
conditions every year, according to Mercy Corps - an average of one person
every three seconds. Yet these shocking realities that rival the worst
predictions of what the coronavirus could bring are ignored as mundane,
business-as-usual non-stories by comparison.
Over 800 million people - one in nine - go to bed hungry every night, with
98 percent of those people living in the global south. Hunger is responsible
for nearly half of all deaths of children under five. Starvation should be a
key feminist issue, as sixty percent of the world's hungry are female. If
mothers are hungry, it affects their children through potential
complications in childbirth, less nutritious milk and less attentive care.
Hunger, especially in childhood, often leads to stunted development, both
physical and mental, and increases the risk of chronic illness, meaning that
it effectively steals children's futures away from them.
Even new and devastating outbreaks of starvation are frequently ignored - if
it is politically expedient to do so. The United Nations estimates that 7.4
million Yemenis need treatment for malnutrition and a further 18 million
lack access to safe drinking water. This comes as a direct consequence of
the Western-backed Saudi attack on the country. Yet because of the U.S.
government's position of supporting the Saudis, the humanitarian crisis has
largely been ignored in the media.
Even in the United States malnutrition is a serious problem. 37 million
Americans struggle with hunger, according to U.S. charity Feeding America,
whose research shows that no state in the union has a food insecurity rate
below seven percent. In other words, you wouldn't have to go far to find the
problem. Yet the press and the political class are largely uninterested
firstly because the victims of those conditions are universally poor and
secondly because they are the direct victims of a system that allocates
resources, including the most basic, such as food and shelter, on the
ability to pay, rather than on need. Thus, highlighting them would be an
indictment of capitalism itself.
In contrast, the coronavirus, like the overblown media coverage of SARS or
bird flu, is a virus that the rich could contract, as it is often
transmitted internationally through people traveling on airplanes. Just as
"dog bites man" is not a story, but "man bites dog" makes the news, the
world's poor dying of easily preventable conditions is just an everyday
occurrence. A similar phenomenon sociologists discuss is called the missing
white woman syndrome, where richer white people who go missing are given far
more press attention than poorer people of color.
Health experts at the World Health Organization have stressed that there is
little cause for panic and there are a number of straightforward precautions
that can be taken to combat the spread of the virus. Those include washing
your hands with soap and water a few times per day, maintaining a three-foot
distance between you and anyone displaying flu-like symptoms and refraining
from touching your face with dirty hands.
Feature photo | European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, left,
speaks during a media conference regarding COVID-19 at the Emergency
Response Coordination Center in Brussels, March 2, 2020. Virginia Mayo | AP
