(Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:49:00 +0000)
# 4199
A recurring theme of this blog has been the lack of responsibility shown by a great many Internet (and sometime mainstream) media outlets when it comes to `reporting’ on influenza, emerging infectious diseases, pandemics, or just science in general.
Controversy sells. And on the Internet, there is little accountability.
You can say just about anything, and get away with it.
What you often end up with are thousands of P.T. Barnum wannabes, selling junk science, conspiracy theories, and thinly veiled agenda’s to a gullible and receptive public.
In September, the big story promoted by many of these fringe sites was the `untested and dangerous vaccine’ that we would soon all be forced to take. Of course, we’ve not seen the predicted carnage from the vaccine, and last time I checked, no one has been strapped down and forcibly injected with deadly nano-particles.
No matter, there’s always next time.
There are websites devoted to the idea that the WHO, the UN, the Bilderbergers, Big Pharma, and others are behind the `release’ of H1N1, and that bird flu is next on their list.
Pandemic paranoia has practically become a cottage industry on the Internet.
In late October and early November, hundreds of websites carried lurid reports of `pneumonic plague’ in Ukraine. Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter were alive with stories, videos, and tweets of patients dying from `burnt lungs’, and the of aerial spraying of biological agents (see Ukraine And The Internet Rumor Mill).
The only problem is . . . these (and other) stories were about 10% fact liberally mixed with about 90% fiction.
Once these stories had run their course, they were replaced by the dreaded Norway Mutation story, which was played to full effect by many of these same sites.
Was there a story in Ukraine?
Sure.
But the truth wasn’t nearly as prurient or exciting to the general public as the fictionalize version being peddled by certain factions of the `new media’. And so the tabloid version of events blotted out most of the serious coverage.
The Norway Mutation story is of considerable scientific interest, and may yet turn out to be important in this pandemic. But right now the science doesn’t support the wilder assertions of a `killer mutation’ on the loose around the world.
You wouldn’t know that by much of the coverage online.
Of course, it would be unfair to paint the entire Internet with the same brush.
While badly outnumbered by purveyors of pseudoscientific poppycock, there are a great many serious, science-rooted, and sane web sites devoted to accurate reporting and reasonable commentary.
You’ll find a large number of reliable flu sources listed in my essay, Reliable Sources In Flublogia.
Today, Helen Branswell of the Canadian Press has an interview with Director General Margaret Chan of the WHO about the communications challenges they have faced when dealing with the media, new and otherwise.
By: Helen Branswell, Medical Reporter, THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA - For the director general of the World Health Organization, the best news of the decade is the fact that the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century is a moderate - some would even call it mild - one.
Still, that lucky break, disease-wise, has created a communications challenge for those in public health in general and the WHO in particular, Dr. Margaret Chan acknowledged Monday in an interview with The Canadian Press.
For years, the WHO and health officials around the world had worried about and planned for the possibility the dangerous H5N1 avian flu virus might trigger the next pandemic. (Many still worry humankind may have a future date with the so-called bird flu.)
Instead, two swine flu viruses swapped genes, giving rise to a new variant that started spreading among people. It was new enough to cause disease and occasionally death. But it was sufficiently similar to viruses that have spread among people in the past that its impact hasn’t been the crisis many feared.
(Continue . . .)
As a `serious’ blogger I accepted long ago that I’ll never be able to compete with the numbers garnered by websites that promote `wild and wacky’ conspiracy theories. The audience for that sort of claptrap is simply greater than the audience for sensible reporting and commentary.
I know how a museum operator must feel in a town filled with strip joints.
Fred Allen, acerbic star of radio during the 1930’s and 1940’s, never really embraced the upstart medium of television (he did appear on it with some frequency, however).
He famously quipped that `Television is a new medium. It’s called a medium because nothing is well-done.’
The same could be said, with a few notable exceptions, for much of the Internet today.
