Watching the news today that a person has (possibly) died in Turkey of the human form of “bird flu” (the infamous H5N1 strain is suspected), I’m again struck by the media-driven paranoia that is being built up around this issue (much like the media drive paedophile hysteria). Every worried journalist’s dire prognosis about the mortality rate of this disease, every “we’re overdue for a flu pandemic” statement, and every “so and so drug is being stockpiled”, we’re led to believe that it is inevitable; horribly fatal; we’re ill prepared for it now; and it is going to cause immense and wide-spread destruction.
Clearly I’m no epidemiologist, but I do feel that the media are making everything so much worse than it really otherwise need be. Watching and panicking over a disease that hasn’t even yet appeared is pointless (in a media sense; not in a biological sense), and purely serves to whip-up paranoia. So that when it finally does happen (whether H5N1, or some other strain), the entire country will grind to a complete halt as we bunker up and fear any knock at the door. Thank goodness we don’t have any sort of right to bear arms.
The juxtaposition is, of course, that we need to be aware these things are happening (lest we trust that “They” will solve all our problems). But every development is blown up out of all proportion, and it feels that the media feel it’s important to act as our moral compass: Worry about this; Be concerned about that.
In a similar vein, “positive” drug test results that immediately hit the newswire before being properly analysed and scrutinised by scientists seem to be seized as the next “miracle cure”, and that there is some horrendous injustice that it’s not available for everybody unfortunate enough to be suffering the ailment to which it applies. Whilst the “postcode lottery” is unfair, continually looking too far ahead unnecessarily raises hopes and serves no particularly good end, especially as the subtleties of medical diagnosis are not so simple as to be fit for a 30 second television news segment: Even I know that not every cancer drug can be applied to every possible cancer condition, but the health reporting we see comes close to implying that.
Anyway, I should stop before I get too carried away. I’m merely venting a little steam that the media continues to run ahead of itself, and whip up fears and hopes unnecessarily - dangerously - even. It’d be rather nice if they simply stuck to reporting the facts where it’s in the public interest to do so, and leave the moralising and diagnosis to others less inclined to boost viewing figures or appease some middle england sense of “the worlds going to pot for {insert reason}”.
Which, of course, it is. But for entirely different reasons which I’ll save for another day 
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January 4th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Oh, how I have longed for the words to say what you have just said, my heartfelt thanks to you for saying it.
January 5th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
I completely agree with Mavis.
January 6th, 2006 at 9:53 am
[...] But his much rumoured drink problem has been another example of media hype and mischief making (See “Media Delirium). As the Guardian points out today, there is a long history of alcohol abuse at Westminster Palace. From Pitt the younger, to Alan Clark, to Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. Mr Kennedy is not the first, and far from the most senior or pressed politicians, to find themselves in regular need of stiff drinks. [...]
April 6th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
[...] H5N1 is confirmed on the east coast, about 50 miles from here, which means no hope of anything resembling important news on the, well, news tonight. It’s hysteria all the way now. [...]