Extract from The Guardian
Afraid? You shouldn’t be ... but a chunk of Australia’s media is determined to infect us all with viral panic
If you’ve bothered to actually visit a tabloid news website recently (the current affairs equivalent of saying “Candyman” five times in a mirror),
you’d be convinced that Ebola was already here and that it was
spreading radicalised Islamic ideology – thanks to a range of bizarre
comparisons to Isis (which I’m not sure can be defeated with soap and
detergent), along with stories telling you Ebola is not in Australia, in
the most but-it-is-in-Australia way possible.
News.com.au helpfully ran a story with the headline starting “Ebola arrives in Australia … ”, announcing the horror of an invading virus as if it were a visiting Royal. The second half clarified things a little, but still left the alarm bells ringing, with “... as scientists join race for vaccine”.
The article goes on to explain that the Ebola virus “was imported nine months ago to the high-security Australian Animal Health and Research Centre in Geelong”. So thank you, news.com.au, for easing me into a story about medical research with a headline that made me think I was about to die. Why not tell us a new firing range has opened with the headline “Shots fired in small town”?
The Australian included an “interactive” ostensibly designed to give you information – while simultaneously filling your pants with fear paste. Click on it and you’re welcomed into The Red Zone with giant, alarming red button on a red background. This is how you give people reliable information about Ebola: with an interactive screen that looks like it might launch nuclear weapons.
Press the red button and you’re shown an image of the Ebola virus that’s so fleeting you could be forgiven for thinking you’d just been shown a subliminal image of a ghost penis. This is immediately followed by what looks like Google Earth if it were powered by the lost spirit of Encarta 97. A few clicks in and they even have the death toll information behind an icon that seems to be an 8-bit coffin. I didn’t dare click it in case Pacman’s corpse fell out.
Not wanting to miss out on terrifying the public for absolutely no reason, some journos at the Daily Telegraph decided to describe a sick patient on an aeroplane with all the sensationalist journo-pish they could muster. Read this piece and you’ll encounter the words “medical emergency”, “vomiting blood”, and “Hazmat gear” before you happen across the crucial information that this was in fact nothing more than someone suffering from a pre-existing renal condition.
You can almost hear the collective sigh from News Corp every time it turns out that someone having a chunder isn’t the beginning of World War Z. Two of the stories mentioned above are actually saying that Ebola isn’t here but just can’t help but report it in a manner that suggests the exact opposite. Do the writers of these pieces behave in real life as they do behind a keyboard? “Holy shit, it’s a beautiful day? What’re we going to do? For God’s sakes we’re all going to enjoy ourselves. Pack a Swiss army knife and run for your lives … happily!”
What we need right now is information, not fear. Probabilistically we’re all going to be absolutely fine, something that is of grave concern to the news outlets currently wearing clown make-up and hiding in drains. Right now someone at the Daily Telegraph website is probably trying to figure out a way to create a pop-up ad that coughs on you.
My advice? Treat these newspapers as you would a virus: quarantine them for as long as they’re infected with fear.
News.com.au helpfully ran a story with the headline starting “Ebola arrives in Australia … ”, announcing the horror of an invading virus as if it were a visiting Royal. The second half clarified things a little, but still left the alarm bells ringing, with “... as scientists join race for vaccine”.
The article goes on to explain that the Ebola virus “was imported nine months ago to the high-security Australian Animal Health and Research Centre in Geelong”. So thank you, news.com.au, for easing me into a story about medical research with a headline that made me think I was about to die. Why not tell us a new firing range has opened with the headline “Shots fired in small town”?
The Australian included an “interactive” ostensibly designed to give you information – while simultaneously filling your pants with fear paste. Click on it and you’re welcomed into The Red Zone with giant, alarming red button on a red background. This is how you give people reliable information about Ebola: with an interactive screen that looks like it might launch nuclear weapons.
Press the red button and you’re shown an image of the Ebola virus that’s so fleeting you could be forgiven for thinking you’d just been shown a subliminal image of a ghost penis. This is immediately followed by what looks like Google Earth if it were powered by the lost spirit of Encarta 97. A few clicks in and they even have the death toll information behind an icon that seems to be an 8-bit coffin. I didn’t dare click it in case Pacman’s corpse fell out.
Not wanting to miss out on terrifying the public for absolutely no reason, some journos at the Daily Telegraph decided to describe a sick patient on an aeroplane with all the sensationalist journo-pish they could muster. Read this piece and you’ll encounter the words “medical emergency”, “vomiting blood”, and “Hazmat gear” before you happen across the crucial information that this was in fact nothing more than someone suffering from a pre-existing renal condition.
You can almost hear the collective sigh from News Corp every time it turns out that someone having a chunder isn’t the beginning of World War Z. Two of the stories mentioned above are actually saying that Ebola isn’t here but just can’t help but report it in a manner that suggests the exact opposite. Do the writers of these pieces behave in real life as they do behind a keyboard? “Holy shit, it’s a beautiful day? What’re we going to do? For God’s sakes we’re all going to enjoy ourselves. Pack a Swiss army knife and run for your lives … happily!”
What we need right now is information, not fear. Probabilistically we’re all going to be absolutely fine, something that is of grave concern to the news outlets currently wearing clown make-up and hiding in drains. Right now someone at the Daily Telegraph website is probably trying to figure out a way to create a pop-up ad that coughs on you.
My advice? Treat these newspapers as you would a virus: quarantine them for as long as they’re infected with fear.
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