Like in any other area of reporting, and perhaps more so, several ethical and other issues can arise in the coverage of disasters and the task of fostering resilience. The twin tasks of providing credible information and demystifying data and expert knowledge for audiences present numerous pitfalls. This chapter provides some guidance on these aspects.
Media coverage is often selective, not comprehensive, and it creates narratives that gather momentum to the extent that they determine how disasters and various actors in the response to disasters are viewed in the public eye. Media narratives also determine where blame is laid, and who is blamed for failures or appreciated for an effective disaster response.
Hurricane Katrina, which hit the city of New Orleans in the USA in 2005, and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 represent the power of public perception that arises from media coverage. While in the former case, the meta-narrative that emerged was about the failure of the government, the media narrative in the latter case created a supportive consensus between the people, the media and the government. Similar examples of dominant narratives abound in the various national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Media narratives gather momentum because the media is often ‘self-referential’, that is, journalists can be guided by the angles covered by other journalists even as they compete with each other. Simply put, once a topic or perspective gains attention, it attracts more attention – and because it attracts more attention, it becomes newsworthy and creates a news wave. It is important to recognise this and make attempts to break this loop where appropriate.
The Association of Health Care Journalists, based at the Missouri School of Journalism in the USA, offers this advice:
Reporting on war, natural disaster, and epidemics – and alerting the world to human suffering and need – serves a compelling public interest. On such assignments, journalists inevitably encounter people with urgent needs for shelter, food, or medical attention. Human decency prompts many journalists to offer aid and comfort to people who are suffering, but reporters must not profit from these acts nor exploit those whom they help.
This is one of the big issues in the coverage of disasters, especially when they are happening and in their immediate aftermath.
In some cases, journalists may find themselves first on the scene, even before the arrival of emergency services. Though their primary job is to get the information out from that location to the wider world, they might be confronted by distressed people whose real needs are medical care, reassurance, food, water and shelter. This is a real dilemma that many disaster journalists face.
There is an intense desire to know what is happening and how that will affect people’s lives during disasters, but the public’s right to know can come into conflict with the wider interest of those very groups. One such example can be seen in the leak of information about a quarantine plan in northern Italy, which was revealed by a newspaper the day before it was to come into effect, thus nullifying it and creating far more widespread problems for Italy as a whole. Leaks and disclosures on such sensitive matters deserve thorough editorial consideration at the highest levels of the media, and the journalistic imperative to be first with the story should not be the only factor taken into account.
Italy experienced its highest day-on-day rise in deaths from coronavirus on Sunday and was plunged into chaos after details of a plan to quarantine more than 16 million people were leaked to the press, sending thousands into panic as they tried to flee.
Information gathered from social media is invaluable to journalists, but it also presents a number of problems. Content circulating on social media can often include rumours, fear-mongering, one-sided perspectives, misguided solutions, unfounded predictions, false cures, dangerous mythology, decontextualized or recontextualized videos, and perspectives that stigmatise certain social groups.
Journalists across the world now use several verification techniques to detect fake news, prevent the spread of misinformation and safeguard their own credibility. These include analysing the social media accounts from where information is originating, reverse image searches, video analysis, and journalistic verification which can be as simple as getting in touch with the individual spreading that information.
There are a number of resources devoted to helping journalists check facts on COVID-19:
The World Health Organization’s “Myth busters” page. The page debunks common myths surrounding COVID-19.
AFP’s “Busting coronavirus myths” page. The Paris-based international news agency’s coronavirus fact-checking page is updated frequently and has debunked more than 100 myths about the virus.
First Draft’s “5 quick ways we can all double-check coronavirus information online.” Among this guide’s resources are tips and tools for verifying images and videos.
PolitiFact’s “7 ways to avoid misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic.” A guide from The Poynter Institute’s political fact-checking service. International Fact-Checking Network’s “CoronaVirusFacts / DatosCoronaVirus Alliance Database.” A database of falsehoods about the novel coronavirus, gathered by an alliance of more than 100 fact-checkers around the world.
Source: Knight Science Journalism: https://ksj.mit.edu/coronavirus-reporting-resources/#data
The UNESCO handbook Journalism, Fake News & Disinformation, presents a range of useful guidelines in this regard. It is available online at: https://en.unesco.org/fightfakenews
Hard data – verified data – is critical at all stages of covering disasters and promoting resilience. Data is central to taking informed decisions about courses of action. People want to know what is going on, whether it is about risk or impact or preparedness. Graphs and charts in stories put out by the media make for much better impact and audience comprehension.
Data represents reality, but of course there are pitfalls. One is that data may not be complete. Another is that data is presented in the language of experts and journalists have to put in the required work to understand what each indicator or data point represents, as with all the information data that surrounds the COVID-19 pandemic – ranging from the basic reproduction number of an infection (R0) to mortality rates, death rates, excess deaths, recovery rates, types and numbers of tests, and economic impacts.
Science lies behind each element of data and this science differs from disaster to disaster, so journalists must put in the required homework to ensure that they understand what scientists are talking about so that they can be sure not to distort its meaning in their output.
Journalists rightly demand data from authorities, but that data may not exist, or it may be premature to release it. So, it is important to be patient and realistic, and to avoid adopting confrontational positions without being aware of the various reasons why data is not always readily available.
A wide variety of resources produced to help journalists cover COVID-19 are available on the website of the Global Forum for Media Development at: https://gfmd.info/reporting-on-covid-19-resources-and-tools/
The state is combining results from viral and antibody tests in the same statistic. This threatens to confound America’s understanding of the pandemic.
The United States’ ability to test for the novel coronavirus finally seems to be improving. As recently as late April, the country rarely reported more than 150,000 new test results each day. The U.S. now routinely claims to conduct more than 300,000 tests a day, according to state-level data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.
Experts may feel that journalists are oversimplifying their perspectives and not reflecting the complexity of the situation. This is not entirely unfounded, for there are often no clear answers in real-life situations and dilemmas, which require a balancing of different priorities rather than a clear-cut yes and no answer. An illustration is provided by the discussions over imposing and lifting lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, with competing imperatives around life and livelihood or wealth and wellbeing.
To deal with the complexity and uncertainty that abound in critical situations such as disasters, it is important to:
