Alarmist? Us?

I’m far from the first to point out how utterly atrocious, to the point of culpability, the media coverage of the whole Panda-demic has been. In both the US and the UK domestic political prejudices have been a huge factor. On both sides of the Pond the COVID-19 stick has been gleefully taken up to beat the Trump and Johnson Governments. Fear has been stoked to the point where some folk are positively demanding to be restricted and stripped of rights. This is not news.

Nevertheless, I thought a dissection of a single example might be useful. This one piece from the Daily Mirror shows how simply, and with how little effort panic can be engendered.

This morning one of the little boxes on my newsfeed caught my eye. Red Daily Mirror masthead, thumbnail picture of a London street and the words “London must go into Tier Three within 48 hours.”

Gosh, I thought. That sounds serious, “must” is pretty definite. As I live just over the bridge from the sprawling fungal infection that is Greater London what happens there is of material interest to me. So I clicked.

Aha, it’s a warning from an “expert”, not an actual statement by the Government or Mayor of London. Already a less alarming statement than the first. Who is this “expert” enquiring minds need to know; I read on…

So, from a stark and very definite statement of fact, we’ve ended up with the opinion of a retired provincial health official from the other end of the country with a book to publicise. Or, to put it another way, a Guardian reader talking to the Guardian. Hmmm.

I took the time to actually read the article. How many folk went about their day today having only glimpsed the thumbnail? Rather more than those who read the whole thing I would guess. This is just one example among thousands of pieces where a doomladen headline covers a story containing only a modest amount of doom lite, or doom flavoured opinion.

It’s not uncommon for people to invoke the Blitz and Dunkirk spirit when trying bolster the British public’s morale. But if British journalists had reported the war up to the summer of 1940 the way their successors in 2020 have reported the Coof Coof, it is doubtful that Britain would have still been in the fight by the end of that year. Our morale would have been low and fragile by the time of Dunkirk and the Blitz. It would have smashed to pieces by those events.