(This is, of course, the On the Media recap for May 1, 2009. I just liked that headline up there by itself.)
This week’s “On the Media” begins with what’s been on our mind all week: swine flu and how ridiculous panic about it is.
Okay, so swine flu can kill people and it can be transmitted from human to human. I’m not seeing how that’s any different from any other flu, except that this is somewhat unseasonable.
All I know is that the flu may be bad, it may spread all over the world, and it may suck – hardcore – to catch it, but it’s the friggin’ flu. Granted, I live in Memphis.
During the yellow fever outbreaks Memphis suffered during the 1800s (there were so many that it’s really counterproductive to list every year they happened), they tried to quarantine the city, just like Mexico seems to be trying. It, uh, didn’t work.
Pretty much the whole city died.
That, my media mavens, moguls, and darlings, is cause for a panic. Not roughly 100 confirmed cases of a mild – if uncured – influenza.
Our friends at WNYC were kind enough to link to an L.A. Times article that totally understands that swine flu is not that bad after all.
The real story here is that the media is flipping the everloving hell out. Our friends at WNYC are cool enough to understand that.
Patrick Di Justo, while being interviewed by Bob Garfield, reminds us all of one other person who understands that – Walter Cronkite.
[For the record, Cronkite's enough of a hero of mine that there was a while there where I was taking his name in vain: stub my toe, shout "Walter H. Cronkite!"]
The fact of the matter is, as Brooke points out earlier, that media love panic. Panic gets ratings. I’m just rather pleased for the news networks that Swine flu erupted in time for May Sweeps.
I know news networks are struggling in this economy, so it’s good to know that they have a real pandemic panic to draw some ratings out of.
Man, it must be hard to be someone like CNN’s Rick Sanchez, not knowing where your next paycheck is going to come from, without the health insurance to get your back if you do catch the swine flu.
All of the panicked coverage I’ve heard of or seen has been on television – except for the bit when I flipped over to AM radio late at night the other night. Public radio and most newspapers I’ve seen are concerned, and cover it mostly because TV news is making such a big deal out of it, but they’re not in panic mode.
I wonder if anyone in public radio is even able to panic. In our brief visit to WNYC last week, it seemed as though everyone (especially OTM producer Katya Rogers), was pretty much unflappable.
This week’s rather disjointed recap was written by a very tired Matthew, and would have been edited… sigh… by Kerry, if she weren’t currently passed out in a food coma next to me.
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