NewsBeat

4 NewsBeat April 2020 By AL TOMPKINS How newsrooms can tone down their coronavirus coverage while still reporting responsibly L et's see if you can guess where this passage comes from: I don't know of any journalist who sets out to scare people, but reporters may unintentionally alarm their audiences with shoddy coverage of a virus that's entered a frenzied news cycle that may lead to panic and ineffective overreaction. It's time we start thinking carefully about the headlines and images we use to cover this story. Context is critical, and there are important local stories to be told that don't emphasize the virus' doom and gloom. It was an article I wrote in 2016 about Zika. Let's be clear: There is no law that says every time journalists mention the word "virus" that they have to precede it with the word "deadly." It is true some people die. But we don't call the traffic jams every day in every city "deadly traffic jams" even though somebody will die every day in traffic. Limit adjectives Everywhere I turn I see news headlines blaring the words "deadly virus" even though for most people the virus is not deadly. Dr. John Torres, medical correspondent at NBC News, said he edits out phrases like "horrific" or "catastrophic." My general recommendation is the worse a situation is the more journalists should limit subjective adjectives. By now people know this is a serious issue. Stick to the cold hard facts. Choose images carefully I recommend that every time you show somebody wearing a facemask, you remind the viewers/readers that experts say the masks do not help prevent the spread of the virus. I would use that information in every cutline regardless of where the photo comes from. It would be easy to imagine that the public is confused about masks. In China the government forced people to wear them. Doctors and nurses wear them. It's understandable for people to think wearing a mask must be important somehow. Yesterday I just flew on a packed Tampa to Detroit flight. One person wore a mask. I thought to myself that if we journalists chose an image from that flight, and the image showed that one person close up in a mask, how out of context would that image be? Social media has been awash in images of people running to Costco to buy emergency supplies. They are buying, among other things, cases of water. Not once did I hear anybody ask customers what they were thinking. Is somebody going to turn off water to your house? Is anybody predicting a water shortage? Frame stories with context Back in 2016, while helping journalists cover the Zika virus, Poynter put together a training workshop that included Dr. Barbara Reynolds, a crisis communications expert. She was with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then. She passed along some thoughts that are useful today. I will adapt Reynold's teaching to the coronavirus story. Stories that recommend people take action but don't require them to are less scary. The more governments force people to act, the more upsetting the story becomes. Stories that explain ways to prevent being exposed are less scary than stories that do not. People want to know "what to do." And even if you have written and reported the recommendations a hundred times already, keep doing it. Man-made emergencies, such as nuclear attacks or biological accidents, are far scarier than natural incidents, like a virus. We live in a world that experiences a wide range of ever- changing viruses. Some are way more deadly every year than this strain of coronavirus has been so far. Not to underplay the serious nature of a spreading illness that the CDC calls "a public health emergency of international concern," but it might be useful context to remember that dengue, a virus, is common in more than 100 countries around the world. 40% of the world's population, about 3 billion people, lives in areas with a risk of dengue. 400 million people get infected with dengue. Approximately 100 million people get sick from infection, and 22,000 die from severe dengue. Compare that to the 92,000 cases of coronavirus recorded so far. A key difference is that we know more about dengue, including how it is spread by mosquitos and that it is a tropical illness. It won't find me on a New York train or a Seattle coffee shop. The CDC said around 45 million people in the U.S. caught the flu last year. Between 18,000 and 46,000 people died. There may have been a half-million hospitalizations due to the flu this season. Did your news stories characterize this year's flu season as the "deadly flu" season? We have come to accept that we are susceptible to seasonal flu. Fever than half of Americans get the flu vaccination, just accepting the chance of getting sick as a part of life. Is the lack of a vaccine that you could get if you wanted it what makes this illness so unsettling compared to the seasonal flu? Journalists should remember — and emphasize — that coronavirus is, for most people, non-lethal. The World Health Organization said the disease caused by the new coronavirus has a 3.4% mortality rate. That is deadlier than the seasonal flu but the seasonal flu does not spread as easily. Most people who are exposed to coronavirus will have mild symptoms and some people might show no symptoms at all. That may be the trickiest part of this situation. People might not know they are spreading the virus because they don't feel awful. Statistical stories are less scary than anecdotal stories. For news stories to really connect with the public, we want to attach faces and names to issues. During the Zika outbreak, the scare took off when we started seeing children born with deformities. Those closeup stories of individuals overwhelm the statistical probabilities of contracting the virus.

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