Coverage of Swine Flu, Predictably, Lacks ANY Context

The loss of context.

If I had to summarize what's happened to news coverage, particularly on television, over the past 25 years, that's what I'd say. The driving force in television news has been to entertain viewers and that means entertain - at all costs.

So, if it takes a news anchor or correspondent another few minutes to provide "background" or "perspective" on a story, that option is usually rejected. The choice is to use black and white - not gray - to tell the story. Attempting to include context is the lowest of priorities.

Clearly, the priority in television news - local and national - is to grab and hold onto viewers by using any means to enliven the broadcast and make it as "easy" as possible for them. That's why national news anchors, at the start of the news, read catchy, little headlines to forecast upcoming stories. It's a little gimmick to get your attention -- and based on the assumption that most of us have no attention span and may grab our remote control any second.

So, these dynamics help explain coverage of the swine flu story. When the story broke, reporters, anchors, and, news executives chose to dwell too much on worst-case scenarios and "signs of death and disaster" rather than to present the hard facts - with less frequency and with important qualifiers and contingencies. The swine flu was covered initially like it posed imminent, scary, out-0f-control threats to people everywhere. However, as each day passed, it became increasingly clear that the inital frenzy was unjustified and irresponsible.

The story picked up its first steam on Sunday, April 26, with the wild coverage peaking on April 27 and 28th as cable news gave it non-stop, "TOP STORY" status. The mere time and weight suggested the flu constituted a national crisis. The tabloid Boston Herald's April 30th Page One headline typified the continuing tone: "Killer Flu Stalks Mass."

Well, neither the Herald or other news outlets mentioned often enough that, in fact, 36,000 Americans die from flu-related (REGULAR flu, that is!) causes each year. The mere mention of that fact instantaneously gave the swine flu story a different context, so, I wish it had been mentioned much more often rather than only once in a while. As I write this, on May 4th, "no deaths and a few serious cases" have been reported outside of Mexico, where this flu outbreak originated and, even in Mexico, the spread of this swine flu has slowed, according to Time magazine's website.

Accurate context is part of the truth. We've just grown so accustomed to ratings-crazy, sensational, shallow news coverage that we accept either distorted context or no context. Television, and now, the Internet, have, unfortunately, dragged down the quality of much news coverage. Truth has been a casualty.

The treatment of the swine flu story was, unfortunately, very predictable. The TV & Internet-dominated media had to choose whether to hype the dramatic, black and white qualities vs. the more bland, gray realities about the illness. The hype sizzles and "sells" while the sober, more accurate version does not. Too many chose approach of the Herald characterization: "Killer Flu Stalks Mass."

For many years now, context has been disappearing from TV news, and, to a lesser degree, often from reporting in newspapers and magazines, which have been trying to compete with television.

The coverage of the OJ Simpson trial, back in 1995, was confirmation that we had entered a new era of "news" coverage. Coverage of the trial shattered any historic boundaries relating to how much attention a story should receive national "news-like" attention driven by entertainment rather than by hard news.

Since then, the examples of "context omission" multiplied to the point of absurdity. Do you recall the extent of attention given to the Monica Lewinsky saga during Bill Clinton's second term? If an alien from outer space reviewed the sheer scope of that episode, he might conclude that Monica Lewinsky was some important, international figure involved in a world crisis. Of course, that story brought incredible entertainment, so, it qualified as a major "news" story when, in fact, it did not deserve more than a tiny fraction of the attention it received.

The O.J. Simpson story opened the door for individual murder stories to be regularly treated as national entertainment stories. It's routine now to turn on cable news and find someone re-hashing the details and speculative angles of some murder story - usually one with a sensational element. (Years ago, individual murders were mostly covered in the place they happened)

Then, there is the variety of ways context is distorted in the day-to-day news. We keep hearing about Madonna's attempts to adopt a baby in Malawi, for example. I'd rather see a story about adoption in Massachusetts, its impact on families and how it's working out or not for children in different circumstances.

I have to mention coverage of weather (once again) because it so disregards reality and context. If there is a chance of a storm, that's the only rationale a local news station needs to inject an overdose of speculation and chatter about "possible" weather contingencies three days away. The good ratings resulting from that attention to weather are treated as more important than the actual weather outside!

That observation is entirely relevant to the swine flu coverage. Several days ago, I was watching a rare television discussion about the media coverage of the swine flu outbreak and one person commented, in essence, that this was a case, at least initially, when "the interests of the media were not the same as the interests of the public. "

Yes. The lack of context in media coverage is SO bad that even when there's a public health threat, decisionmaking about how to convey the news is influenced to a very disturbing degree, by how to attract ratings rather than how to present the truth -- in context. That's pretty bad.