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Continued from Media Tactics During COVID - Part 1
Journalists are not the enemy – media houses are!
In regular times, media plays mind games. Rather, it will not be wrong to state that media uses a specific tactic for every event, making prominent headlines.
However, COVID-19 is a unique event that lasted for more than any other story, after the great wars. Therefore, this article aims to specifically highlight the role of media, across the world, during the COVID pandemic.
The article draws inspiration from Noam Chomsky’s 10 media manipulation strategies list. Here are a few more.
Creating problems and then offering the solutions -
We all heard of a shortage of PPE in the early days of the pandemic. Especially the masks. The media continued to pump the story of the shortage.
The way, media sounded the lack of masks, it looked as if a mask is equivalent to some lifesaving medication. The media’s wrongful hype and sensationalism created panic worldwide.
Some people even started wearing scuba diving masks to the supermarket in extreme desperation. Developing countries witnessed market manipulation, and the masks sold at a premium of 20 times.
Was the shortage the real problem?
The public didn’t know either the substitute of those masks or the science behind using a mask. If the media had educated the public, facilitated by the scientific community, the situation would have been better.
For the first few weeks of the pandemic, the population was unaware of using different masking methods. Had they known, there wouldn’t be any shortage for either the public or the hospitals.
Consequentially, though not proven, many lives could have been saved. All that media was supposed to do was give the correct information at the right time.
As it turns out later, the public was required to cover their nose and mouth in whatever way they could when outside their homes.
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All that media was supposed to do was give the correct information at the right time
How do we know this was the proper method? Later, the same scientific and political community started the propaganda of wearing the mask, Today, many countries have made masks compulsory at places of gathering.
Once the panic about the shortage was created, the expert panel sat on prime time, but didn’t discuss how the public could make their masks and help alleviate the shortage.
Instead, the channels discussed the manufacturing deficiency in their home country and how China monopolised PPEs. More than the benefits of masks, the topic was about civil liberties and freedom.
Only if the media properly presented the benefits of masks, even the most ardent opposer would have accepted the face covering, for no one wants to lose their life for a piece of cloth.
Even as time passed, the media did not educate the masses about using substitutes of surgical masks or the correct method to wear them.
As a result, we often see prominent leaders and public figures wearing masks incorrectly. Some mass leaders didn’t wear them at all.
If the media is responsible for providing the public with beneficial information, why was the PPE shortage fed as a panic story? Was it a real shortage or an unnecessary panic?
The Strategy of Graduation -
During the COVID, the media has used numerous statistics and infographics to highlight the force of COVID. They threw those emotionless numbers into people’s living rooms as if deaths were normal.
200 deaths per day due to one kind of known infection became news, as though there is nothing to worry about. It was a low death rate, and life can move on, the reports suggested.
Statistics like 150 in 1,00,000 deaths or recovery percentage were given to the public daily. What do they mean, and how does one process these numbers?
While numbers are supposed to provide a vivid description of the situation, these numbers are too subjective.
They meant nothing in terms of measuring well-being, adding to more confusion. Ask anyone on the street if they can interpret those statistics, and they will fail.
The public was given too many statistical formulae and tools during the pandemic. 7-day average, moving average, peak, R, curve flattening, probability, percentage recovery, rate of death and infection rate etc., are a few of them.
Together they give some understanding to a high IQ well-educated person, but to a layman, they are incomprehensible.
Also, there is no benchmark to compare these statistics, and hence numbers are just hanging there pointlessly. Ultimately, it is about saving a life that most concerns a pandemic and nothing more.
These numbers are insignificant for a family who has lost a loved one. In that case, everything is 100% lost and grief. There are no numbers invented that can define the degree of tragedy inflicted.
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These numbers are insignificant for a family who has lost a loved one
Media reports and presentations have made statistics primary, compared to human misery, by normalising the seriousness. It is no less than cruelty.
Today, in the middle of July 2021, there are nearly 500 daily deaths in the USA, about 500 in India (official) and more than 1000 in Brazil. 16 other countries are reporting daily deaths in three digits.
As a result, these statistics have added to the already growing insensitivity in society. In future, when a major tragic event happens, then the media will have justification to minuscule it, comparing it with COVID.
Consequentially, the public will lose the ability to absorb the gravity of any other tragedy that’s lesser than COVID.
For example, the world is insensitive to the plight of refugees crossing the oceans or the many dying in war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. They are just numbers, repeated as stories without emotions and redressal.
How many headlines have we found which tried to fix the cause of the COVID pandemic?
How many headlines worldwide have tried to fix accountability for the loss of thousands of lives in a particular country?
Not a single country has instituted an inquiry into the pandemic. None of the media is aggressively demanding it either, while sheepishly, they all continue to report failures and mismanagement as if it is normal.
How many headlines worldwide continue to highlight vaccine inequality and its remedial action? Vaccine shortage in the developing world is acceptable because most vaccines come from advanced countries. Rich countries have hoarded vaccines, and it is not making any news, as if it is their right to do so.
The adverse side effects of the vaccines are also not discussed in the media. Initially, there were some discussions about the blood clots but got subsided with an argument justified by statistics.
Many would have heard that those likely fatalities due to clotting is lower than getting hit by a lightning strike. But the media isn’t playing back to those accountable for adverse effects, that “One life lost is one too many.”
The media couldn’t build confidence that adverse side effects would be reported with proper priority. Out of a few hundred cases, some were serious, and others not, but they all needed to be reported in public interest.
For example, when they reported blood clotting, many countries had suspended the vaccination program. Similarly, other adverse side effects too should be highlighted by the media for an effective government response.
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D8;jsessionid=C10537EB860A14C85BC00D8F9FB0
Yet, Britain continued despite a voluminous list of yellow card entries reporting adverse side effects. Other developed and developing countries didn’t even bother to record the adverse effects formally.
So, while the population inoculated themselves in panic, trusting governments with ignorance of side effects, the media generally kept a blind eye on this issue.
Even in normal times, adverse effects of any other vaccinations or medicine are acceptable. There is already a long list of disclaimers accompanying those drugs, informing the contraindications.
Surprisingly, the list of side effects is growing with time. It is so normalised that it is not even reported in the mainstream media as a concern.
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It is like the slow death of conscience
The media is supposed to report the facts with the proper emphasis. As feared, reporting adverse effects will not promote hesitancy; instead, it will pressure the pharma companies to formulate better versions. Also, it will give the public the appropriate visibility and generate trust in the systems.
On the contrary, the media is keeping quiet on this matter, and in turn, responsible for promoting distrust in the medical system, the underlying science and apprehension about government policies.
In principle, as more and more unimportant and distracting information is fed into the public domain, the sensitivity towards the real problem lowers, and the acceptability of the problem heightens.
Hence, living with those problems become routine rather than a battle to overcome. It is like the slow death of conscience.
It is how media pushes us to gradually graduate to do nothing and accept things as it is.
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