This is what I was trying to write earlier today, as the difference between the slow growth of the Real Life Pandemic and the virulent growth of the Media Pandemic continued to diverge. Tried a bunch of ways to write it, but eventually thought "sod it, just put your thoughts down".
I was interested in 3 things:
- Anyone who has read anything on the Meedia will know that they are structurally incapable of handling a story like this rationally, the temptation to ham it up for headlines is too great.
- However, given the recent admonishment that the only way the Mainstream Media would be able to charge more than the Blogosphere would be by adding more value, would they do so?
- Conversely, given the Blogosphere's various claims of superiority, could they demonstrate it in covering this. The omens were not good, given the vapidity of the Twitter coverage to date.
The day started with BBC Radio 4, and four different reports.
- The Mexican team looking at the 'flu virus said that of the 150 odd deaths to date, only 7 were directly attributable to this strain of the 'Flu.
- An American had died shock! horrror!. Only on closer questioning was it clear that the unfortunate little soul was 23 months old, was Mexican, and had very recently come over the border.
- The WHO has raised the threat level from 4 to 5 - what this means is that "pandemic is imminent, and countries must go on a war footing"
- An "expert" on 'flu claimed that "as many as 40%" of the UK population could get it and that deaths "could be in the millions". The presenter pointed out that the 1918 flu hit 30% at its most virulent, and of those 10% died, and "surely we were better prepared now".
And BBC Radio 4 is probably the only bit of the Meedja (that I've monitored anyway) that has been in any way rational about this. On the train into London, the headlines all screamed about our impending doom in technicolour terror. Some of the
chaps in the Media blamed "the authorities" for spreading FUD, blithely ignoring their own role. (In fact the government's chief health officer has been one of the most rational commentators)
Nowhere - Nowhere! Did I see anything talking about the facts that:
- All Flu's kill - globally, about 1,000 people a day (seasonal adjust) die of flu annually anyway. Small children, ill and elderly are most vulnerable.
- Poor people die at rates an order of magnitude above well off people
In other words, for Mexico, with 110m people is in line for about 13 deaths from Flu A DAY! 7 Dead of a new strain of Flu in A MONTH is statistically well within normal - in fact, over the 14 days this has been going on we'd expect to see c 175 deaths in Mexico from Flu.
(I was not monitoring exhaustively, and I'm sure there were some cooler heads, but lets juts say that moderate reporting was not top-of-page in the Meedja circus)
So much for olde media, lets see, thought I, whether the New Meedja was going to do a better job .
Fat Chance!
Scanning the blogosphere was no better, there again the seductive tale of doom and destruction was too much, and off they all rushed. I read
Ben Goldacre's piece with mounting dread as even he, Bad Science Exposeur du jour, wouldn't be drawn on whether the more extreme prognostications were - well, extreme.
But there were green shoots - In the Blogosphere I did find people setting down real facts, and I found that there were people lampooning the po-faced seriouseness of the whole Pandemic Panjandrum on Twitter - the
#aporkalypse stream for example, bringing us up to date fun-poking at the excesses of the Epigdemic, and the unreality of impending Armagammon.
(Update - and of course, where there's muck
there's brass)
But overall, as to responsible reporting from the Large Organs of the Olde or New Media - a pox on both their houses!
* I did change the original title, "The Swinal Snoutdown" I saw from @therealMarteen and it was too good to miss)
