At this time, worldwide media coverage has focused on the spread of the new Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Making information in a difficult and uncertain moment like this presents great difficulties for journalists, who have the responsibility to cover the evolution of the health emergency in a correct, updated and verified way, using tones that do not generate panic among readers but which at the same time do not diminish the gravity of the situation. The risk in these cases is not only to amplify disinformation, but also to feed fear.
The role of journalism is crucial in cases of epidemics (or pandemics, as the new Coronavirus has now defined by the World Health Organization), which, as the AMA Journal of Ethics writes , are crises that concern not only the public health, but also information.
This article collects reflections and best practices on how journalism should deal with epidemics and pandemics, how to cover the spread of the new Coronavirus and reporter safety tips.
Journalism, epidemics and pandemics
In 2003, journalist Helen Branswell found herself covering the spread of the SARS epidemic in Toronto. The reporter then specialized in health issues, and in 2017 drafted a series of tips for journalists who need to cover epidemics or pandemics of infectious diseases.
The first thing to keep in mind is that information can change over time. “At the beginning of an epidemic, not everything is known, and people need to understand that if the information they receive changes, it is not necessarily because something was being hidden from them. It’s because more is known over time, ”says Branswell. Journalists should also acquire this awareness: “They must know that the knowledge they have [about the epidemic] can change, they must be ready for these changes and include them in the journalistic work”.
Regardless of the disease in question, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the epidemiology and basic transmission modalities of infectious diseases, to understand the meaning of key concepts such as “incubation period” or direct or indirect transmission. This basic operational awareness is also useful in case of unknown epidemics, since infectious diseases tend to follow patterns.
Knowing the transmission models helps to communicate the risk of an epidemic to the public, while knowing what the fundamentals of epidemiology are helps in preparing the interviews to make them more precise and targeted.
Speaking of the latter, one piece of advice from Branswell is to check that the experts to be heard really are, perhaps by crossing their answers with those of others, since, warns the journalist, during the epidemics many wannabe experts come out . To start choosing one’s contacts well, Branswell suggests starting with epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists, and also anthropologists, who can highlight other aspects from a cultural context point of view.
Read also >> All our articles on coronavirus
In an article published on the Scientific American blog , Bill Hanage and Marc Lipstich, both professors of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, write that emergencies such as that of the Coronavirus pandemic bring great pressure on both scientists and journalists, who want to be the first to hear the news. The risk is to accept lower journalistic standards in order to have easy “rewards” in terms of attention, contributing to the dissemination of inaccurate information (when not false) or not to correct it quickly. “We have a shared responsibility to protect public health,” say the two scientists, “the virus doesn’t read newspaper articles and doesn’t care about Twitter.”
Good journalism and science must distinguish legitimate sources of information from rumors, half-truths, propaganda. A task that, in the midst of a pandemic, can become arduous. To help journalists, Hanage and Lipstich distinguished three levels of information: a) what we know to be true; b) what we think is true (evaluations based on facts, on their extrapolation or on their interpretation which reflects an individual’s point of view on what is likely to happen); c) opinions and hypotheses.
In the first group there are the facts. For example: the infection is caused by a beta-coronavirus, the initial sequences of the virus viral genome were very similar , the transmission between humans is very frequent. “There are many elements supporting these circumstances, including scientific studies and reports from public health authorities.”
Category b) includes “most of the things we would like to know about the epidemic but we do not know why there are no systematic data on the real number of cases in all countries; the extent of EU broadcasting outside of China – or the fraction of cases that are spreading undetected; the real proportion of infected with mild, asymptomatic symptoms; and the degree of transmission of pre-symptomatic cases “. On this type of topic, according to the professors, experts can give opinions based on their knowledge of other infectious diseases, deduce consequences from the available data or perhaps report information they have heard of and trust but which have not yet been made public (e.g. likely long-term trajectories of the outbreak).
Finally, in the last category there are many other issues for which the evidence is extremely limited to date. Then there are questions that will never really be resolved by the data, such as those concerning the motivations that push the actions of governments and health authorities. “It doesn’t mean these issues aren’t important, just that they’re not accessible to science at the moment – and perhaps never will be.”
