sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
A brilliant piece by Crof
"The media that didn't bark in the night
It's Saturday, a gorgeous spring afternoon in Vancouver—sunny and warm. H5N1 seems to have gone to sleep for the weekend. But The Times of India has posted an article in its Sunday edition: Bird flu virus may have mutated. Excerpt:
But the media, especially in hot-zone countries, should be able to add local value to these wire-service reports.
If I were an editor with a hot-zone newspaper, I'd sit down with two or three of my young reporters and tell them to read up on everything they could find about H5N1. Then I'd send them out to pester senior health-ministry bureaucrats and the best virologists and epidemiologists in the country.
I'd also send them into the countryside to talk to officials at the district and village level, and to every veterinarian available.
"Don't come back," I'd tell them, "until you can tell our readers what this means for us, for our country and our people. Never mind Nanjing or Cairo or wherever—how is this going to affect us, and what do our best experts—our experts, not David Nabarro or Dr.Webster—say we should do about it?"
And every time we heard of a new case, I'd send someone out to talk to everyone involved: the family, the neighbours, the hospital staff, the lab that tests for H5N1. If it was a fatal case, I'd demand as much of the medical data as I could get, and I'd publish it.
If the patient survived, I'd make sure we reported on how he or she was doing a month later, three months later, a year later. I'd want my readers to know what was at stake for the victims of H5N1 and for their communities.
What if my country's health ministry complained about how my paper was exaggerating the threat? I'd send my reporters to give the ministry more attention than it wants, from the minister on down.
Because the job of the media, everywhere, should be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
"The media that didn't bark in the night
It's Saturday, a gorgeous spring afternoon in Vancouver—sunny and warm. H5N1 seems to have gone to sleep for the weekend. But The Times of India has posted an article in its Sunday edition: Bird flu virus may have mutated. Excerpt:
The highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus has passed from human-to-human in China, raising fears that the virus may have started to mutate. In a highly rare case, genetic tests on a 52-year-old father diagnosed with bird flu in the Jiangsu province of China has shown that he was infected by H5N1 from his 24-year-old dying son.
And so on. Recycling is all very well, and no doubt many Times readers haven't heard about the Nanjing cluster.
But the media, especially in hot-zone countries, should be able to add local value to these wire-service reports.
If I were an editor with a hot-zone newspaper, I'd sit down with two or three of my young reporters and tell them to read up on everything they could find about H5N1. Then I'd send them out to pester senior health-ministry bureaucrats and the best virologists and epidemiologists in the country.
I'd also send them into the countryside to talk to officials at the district and village level, and to every veterinarian available.
"Don't come back," I'd tell them, "until you can tell our readers what this means for us, for our country and our people. Never mind Nanjing or Cairo or wherever—how is this going to affect us, and what do our best experts—our experts, not David Nabarro or Dr.Webster—say we should do about it?"
And every time we heard of a new case, I'd send someone out to talk to everyone involved: the family, the neighbours, the hospital staff, the lab that tests for H5N1. If it was a fatal case, I'd demand as much of the medical data as I could get, and I'd publish it.
If the patient survived, I'd make sure we reported on how he or she was doing a month later, three months later, a year later. I'd want my readers to know what was at stake for the victims of H5N1 and for their communities.
What if my country's health ministry complained about how my paper was exaggerating the threat? I'd send my reporters to give the ministry more attention than it wants, from the minister on down.
Because the job of the media, everywhere, should be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."