Media Coverage of COVID -19

[Scrotnig]

The media has moved through a number of different statistical measures, starting with the number of cases & deaths, then focusing more just on deaths. As deaths started to reduce they had a brief flirtation with the R0 value, but when that proved to be problematic for them, primarily because they didn't fully understand that it is not a absolute value like say infections or deaths, they've now moved onto cases per 100,000. And they've done this to feed the web pages and social media feeds to generate those clicks that may them more relevant, or generate advertisement income.

People who take their time researching the virus and understanding the data are not their targets, it is to put it bluntly aimed at what we come to describe as the Facebook Experts, or Karens who are spreading all kinds of misinformation and hysteria. These are the ones most likely to start clicking when a media outlet has headlines like "Cases increase by 50% in <insert name of small town> in one day" when an area sees 2 cases instead of 1.

Many are quoting the total number of cases since the start of this as a per-100,000 figure and then stating that it isn't going down anywhere. Well of course it's not. Once a case exists, it exists permanently! That figure can only ever go up or stay the same. It cannot go down.

 

[adc82140]

On the BBC this morning:

Winter wave of coronavirus 'could be worse than first'

The radio news was full of that this morning. So much might might could could. Yes a second wave could be worse than the first. Or it might not be. A plague of locusts could also descend today, but might not

 

[Bantamzen]

The radio news was full of that this morning. So much might might could could. Yes a second wave could be worse than the first. Or it might not be. A plague of locusts could also descend today, but might not

All this talk of the "second wave" got me wondering a while back. The phrase appears to have been derived from the Spanish Flu pandemic starting in 1918. And so then I wondered if there were any different conditions back in 1918 that might not be the same as 2020. The only differences I could find were the First World War, the fact that health systems all over the world were completely overwhelmed with millions of people with crippling injuries & effects of warfare, huge amounts of poverty in what we now know as the Developed World, and huge numbers of people returning slowly by boats to their home countries from said world war.

I'm sure none of these were in any way related though....

 

[Mag_seven]

On the BBC this morning:

Winter wave of coronavirus 'could be worse than first'

Well what do you expect now that they have moved on from the face covering issue in shops (having achieved "victory"). No doubt the Facebook Karens and the Twitter Coronaphobes will be seizing on this and demanding a second lockdown in the winter. I remember when the media used to report news i.e. stuff that had happened not hypothetical things that might happen.

 

[Mojo]

They are all doing it. Not content with scaring people witless for the past few months about death rates and so on, now the picture in the UK is a lot more positive they have now moved on to sharing stories about how people have never recovered from Covid-19 and are still experiencing bad symptoms three months on.

The following story shared by Owen Jones this morning, from Sky news.

“Italian doctors are becoming increasingly concerned that there has been a huge underestimation of the severity of #COVID19.”

 

[adc82140]

If you are sick enough to be on a ventilator long term with anything, you will have a slow recovery. It's not Covid specific.

 

[PHILIPE]

They are all doing it. Not content with scaring people witless for the past few months about death rates and so on, now the picture in the UK is a lot more positive they have now moved on to sharing stories about how people have never recovered from Covid-19 and are still experiencing bad symptoms three months on.

The following story shared by Owen Jones this morning, from Sky news.

“Italian doctors are becoming increasingly concerned that there has been a huge underestimation of the severity of #COVID19.”

There used to be a charge section in the military "Spreading Alarm and Despondency within the ranks" We have quite a number of those qualifying to be charged let loose in the country now.

 

[BJames]

Well what do you expect now that they have moved on from the face covering issue in shops (having achieved "victory"). No doubt the Facebook Karens and the Twitter Coronaphobes will be seizing on this and demanding a second lockdown in the winter. I remember when the media used to report news i.e. stuff that had happened not hypothetical things that might happen.

I know there's not necessarily a lot of good news at the moment but the media really is trying to put a negative spin on everything. We were sitting in a lovely independent restaurant yesterday but the one complaint I have is that BBC news was on, on a massive TV screen, with subtitled images of the newsreader explaining how there would be "no return to normal for the forseeable future", and talk of how nasty the virus is. Even when going out to eat a meal in a so-called "Covid-secure" way, we're still being exposed to the media's depressing outlook.

Seen a lot of people recently talking about how the economy is so much less important than saving lives. I just can't understand how people are being so one-sided about it, a destruction of the economy will destroy the lives of many many more, and for much longer than the coronavirus is around.

 

[PHILIPE]

I know there's not necessarily a lot of good news at the moment but the media really is trying to put a negative spin on everything. We were sitting in a lovely independent restaurant yesterday but the one complaint I have is that BBC news was on, on a massive TV screen, with subtitled images of the newsreader explaining how there would be "no return to normal for the forseeable future", and talk of how nasty the virus is. Even when going out to eat a meal in a so-called "Covid-secure" way, we're still being exposed to the media's depressing outlook.

Seen a lot of people recently talking about how the economy is so much less important than saving lives. I just can't understand how people are being so one-sided about it, a destruction of the economy will destroy the lives of many many more, and for much longer than the coronavirus is around.

It may give one the impression that they are trying to brainwash the public.

 

[Huntergreed]

It may give one the impression that they are trying to brainwash the public.

If so, one look at the arguments that “pro-lockdown” supporters give and one could argue they’ve succeeded

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Many are quoting the total number of cases since the start of this as a per-100,000 figure and then stating that it isn't going down anywhere. Well of course it's not. Once a case exists, it exists permanently! That figure can only ever go up or stay the same. It cannot go down.

Most newspaper websites have a daily article headed something along the lines of "Coronavirus: death toll continues to rise". Well of course it's going to continue to rise! The only way it wouldn't would be if people who'd already died of the virus came back to life as zombies or something!

 

[MikeWM]

More pointless modelling. You'd think they'd just keep quiet after every single model the world over turned out to be woefully wrong. But no.

Turns out our good friend Mr Ferguson ('makes weather forecasters and economists look competent') was involved with this 'model' too

 

[BJames]

Turns out our good friend Mr Ferguson ('makes weather forecasters and economists look competent') was involved with this 'model' too

Interesting, it's funny that.. it's certainly the first thing that came to my head when I saw the headline grabbing number of 120,000 deaths expected.

 

[MikeWM]

Very occasionally something does sneak through the BBC propaganda. See this twitter thread about a Newsnight discussion on Friday:

https://twitter.com/deb_cohen/status/1282244768257499136

this part in particular is interesting, if unsurprising:

We had been told by various sources WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying. This point was put to WHO who did not deny

and

We said some people think we should not wait for RCTs before putting policies in place

which is quite clearly true, including, incredibly, the President of the Royal Society.


But this seems like someone trying to facilitate a fairly reasoned and balanced discussion, unlike pretty much everything else the BBC puts out nowadays.

 

[Class 33]

I too am sick and tired of these headlines/articles from BBC, Sky News, Express, etc such as "Terrifying DEADLY SECOND WAVE will come this winter" and "150,000 in the UK could die from SECOND WAVE this Winter", etc. There may not even be a second wave atall, hopefully! And if there unfortunately is, how do they know that 150,000 will die from it?? Back in March scientific experts predicted 500,000 people in the UK will die from Coronavirus THIS YEAR. They got that wrong, as we are nowhere near anything like those sort of levels, and on a 7-day rolling average the death rate is continuing to fall!

 

[BJames]

Very occasionally something does sneak through the BBC propaganda. See this twitter thread about a Newsnight discussion on Friday:

https://twitter.com/deb_cohen/status/1282244768257499136

this part in particular is interesting, if unsurprising:



and



which is quite clearly true, including, incredibly, the President of the Royal Society.


But this seems like someone trying to facilitate a fairly reasoned and balanced discussion, unlike pretty much everything else the BBC puts out nowadays.

Interesting read. On the whole, evidence based journalism is no longer existent, and following the science as the government claims is nonsense - it's political point scoring and Johnson thinks he needs to score some more points based on his appalling ratings throughout the crisis.

 

[kez19]

The media has moved through a number of different statistical measures, starting with the number of cases & deaths, then focusing more just on deaths. As deaths started to reduce they had a brief flirtation with the R0 value, but when that proved to be problematic for them, primarily because they didn't fully understand that it is not a absolute value like say infections or deaths, they've now moved onto cases per 100,000. And they've done this to feed the web pages and social media feeds to generate those clicks that may them more relevant, or generate advertisement income.

People who take their time researching the virus and understanding the data are not their targets, it is to put it bluntly aimed at what we come to describe as the Facebook Experts, or Karens who are spreading all kinds of misinformation and hysteria. These are the ones most likely to start clicking when a media outlet has headlines like "Cases increase by 50% in <insert name of small town> in one day" when an area sees 2 cases instead of 1.

Agree with above...

 

[kez19]

Well what do you expect now that they have moved on from the face covering issue in shops (having achieved "victory"). No doubt the Facebook Karens and the Twitter Coronaphobes will be seizing on this and demanding a second lockdown in the winter. I remember when the media used to report news i.e. stuff that had happened not hypothetical things that might happen.

For me they could forget a lockdown in the winter I’m sure most would rather be out than stuck inside..

 

[Bantamzen]

Very occasionally something does sneak through the BBC propaganda. See this twitter thread about a Newsnight discussion on Friday:

https://twitter.com/deb_cohen/status/1282244768257499136

this part in particular is interesting, if unsurprising:



and



which is quite clearly true, including, incredibly, the President of the Royal Society.


But this seems like someone trying to facilitate a fairly reasoned and balanced discussion, unlike pretty much everything else the BBC puts out nowadays.

This is what happens when you start to dig beyond the headlines, you start to find some doubt cast on things like the effectiveness of masks. Sadly this will probably be quietly swept under the carpet at the BBC. Its not going to suit their narrative at the moment.

 

[al78]

I know there's not necessarily a lot of good news at the moment but the media really is trying to put a negative spin on everything. We were sitting in a lovely independent restaurant yesterday but the one complaint I have is that BBC news was on, on a massive TV screen, with subtitled images of the newsreader explaining how there would be "no return to normal for the forseeable future", and talk of how nasty the virus is. Even when going out to eat a meal in a so-called "Covid-secure" way, we're still being exposed to the media's depressing outlook.

Seen a lot of people recently talking about how the economy is so much less important than saving lives. I just can't understand how people are being so one-sided about it, a destruction of the economy will destroy the lives of many many more, and for much longer than the coronavirus is around.

Talking about the economy, this doesn't make good reading, but is anyone really surprised?

OBR: UK faces worst downturn in 300 years

Government borrowing this year is forecast to be £322bn, up from an earlier estimate of around £300bn.

uk.yahoo.com

"UK faces worst downturn in 300 years"

 

[kez19]

This is what happens when you start to dig beyond the headlines, you start to find some doubt cast on things like the effectiveness of masks. Sadly this will probably be quietly swept under the carpet at the BBC. Its not going to suit their narrative at the moment.

I will ask this, is there any media out there we (public) can turn to or is it at a guess we all do our own research (or is that a dangerous path to suggest?). In general I am as open minded as I can be in all this but the more the media spin including the politicians the more its becoming fishy or what people have compared it to is George Orwell 1984....

 

[BJames]

Talking about the economy, this doesn't make good reading, but is anyone really surprised?

OBR: UK faces worst downturn in 300 years

Government borrowing this year is forecast to be £322bn, up from an earlier estimate of around £300bn.

uk.yahoo.com

"UK faces worst downturn in 300 years"

Not good. And no, not surprised. What's incredible to me is that some people are surpised. It's surely quite clear that if you pretty much stop the economy for 2 1/2 months it's not going to cause the economy to grow or maintain itself, especially given some sectors still haven't restarted, and others (including nightlife and tourism largely) won't really properly restart for months to come.

 

[Bantamzen]

I will ask this, is there any media out there we (public) can turn to or is it at a guess we all do our own research (or is that a dangerous path to suggest?). In general I am as open minded as I can be in all this but the more the media spin including the politicians the more its becoming fishy or what people have compared it to is George Orwell 1984....

In all honesty you should treat all media with a healthy degree of cynicism. That's not necessarily because of some Orwellian subplot to distort the truth, although there have been high profile cases where they have. But the media, and I do include the BBC need to sell their product. And as others have said, bad news sells, and bad news, sells.

We've grown up in a society exposed electronically to the horrors of war, famine and disease from the comfort of our living rooms. And because of that comfort we have felt, we have been left fascinated and wanting more.

Until covid. When the big bad virus burst out of our screens and into our society, the media had a whole new level of real to play with. And it probably in part why the levels of hysteria are where they are, the media had to ramp up 24/7/365 coverage of bad things elsewhere in the world into 24/7/365/4K/UHD right here on your doorstep, and that meant keeping people fixed to their media devices and not venturing outside.

So because of all this my advice is simple, take nothing at face value. Question it, compare it, and research it. The media isn't evil, at least not yet, but it isn't great.

 

[kez19]

In all honesty you should treat all media with a healthy degree of cynicism. That's not necessarily because of some Orwellian subplot to distort the truth, although there have been high profile cases where they have. But the media, and I do include the BBC need to sell their product. And as others have said, bad news sells, and bad news, sells.

We've grown up in a society exposed electronically to the horrors of war, famine and disease from the comfort of our living rooms. And because of that comfort we have felt, we have been left fascinated and wanting more.

Until covid. When the big bad virus burst out of our screens and into our society, the media had a whole new level of real to play with. And it probably in part why the levels of hysteria are where they are, the media had to ramp up 24/7/365 coverage of bad things elsewhere in the world into 24/7/365/4K/UHD right here on your doorstep, and that meant keeping people fixed to their media devices and not venturing outside.

So because of all this my advice is simple, take nothing at face value. Question it, compare it, and research it. The media isn't evil, at least not yet, but it isn't great.

I would have used other sources like RT (Russia Today), as an alternative but even I don't trust them as much as I would like too as the alternative to the likes of BBC/Sky/STV/ITN etc.

Seems to be the trend though and agree bad news "sells" oh well there goes "sex" sells (lol)

Good valid point at the end .... question/compare/research it

I'll add this and it maybe a valid point for us all but even I wouldn't trust some of these politicians either (saying this as in both UK/Scottish Governents) but even media to an extent doesn't question enough it just takes it as face value too, I guess media these days can't grow a backbone and actually say hold on a minute but... its quite the opposite of "yes minister... we obey"...

 

[birchesgreen]

I turned off from the media earlier into this crisis, mostly due to boredom. I just have a look at the guardian about 4pm to see what the latest death/cases figures are then turn off again.

 

[Bantamzen]

I would have used other sources like RT (Russia Today), as an alternative but even I don't trust them as much as I would like too as the alternative to the likes of BBC/Sky/STV/ITN etc.

Seems to be the trend though and agree bad news "sells" oh well there goes "sex" sells (lol)

Good valid point at the end .... question/compare/research it

I really wish more people would do this, especially those "experts" that frequent social media and seemingly base their understanding on memes and a handful of news headlines. Its truly depressing to see people using the greatest repository of knowledge and understand to spread utter wibble.

​

I'll add this and it maybe a valid point for us all but even I wouldn't trust some of these politicians either (saying this as in both UK/Scottish Governents) but even media to an extent doesn't question enough it just takes it as face value too, I guess media these days can't grow a backbone and actually say hold on a minute but... its quite the opposite of "yes minister... we obey"...

It is a valid point, its been another disappointment watching the media throw the government underarm questions and really not challenge the decisions at every stage, in particular those brought in under the emergency powers. Even in situations like this, we should not just meekly accept any measure or rule change without at least querying the rational, and forward plan at every stage. The mask situation is one such example, we are doing it seemingly at the wrong end of the measures, the government are not really offering anything new based in science, there are questions about the WHO's motivations for changing their stance, and there is no clear end game. The media should be getting their teeth into these issues, instead of just asking how scared we should all be and why aren't we having even harsher measures because other countries did....

 

[adc82140]

I trust RT for nothing. It's the mouthpiece of the Kremlin. All the UK newspapers are sensationalist claptrap, as is Sky News. The BBC website sits alongside the Guardian when it comes to mistakes, broadcast BBC is a bit better. For international news France 24 is good. If you want real domestic Covid information, you're better off pulling the figures directly from the gov.uk website and crunching the numbers yourself.

 

[kez19]

I trust RT for nothing. It's the mouthpiece of the Kremlin. All the UK newspapers are sensationalist claptrap, as is Sky News. The BBC website sits alongside the Guardian when it comes to mistakes, broadcast BBC is a bit better. For international news France 24 is good. If you want real domestic Covid information, you're better off pulling the figures directly from the gov.uk website and crunching the numbers yourself.

I didn't mean to throw RT in it here lol .... I use to watch it as alternative but I seen if it was an issue related to Scotland it was more of a "love in" but if it was something in relation to the UK Government like all UK media to an extent throw them to the dogs... but I agree

That'll be next step with Sturgeon.... block UK Government sites... live with .scot (shudders)

 

[birchesgreen]

Nothing wrong with watching RT along with the other outlets like the BBC, they are all state propaganda in varying degrees.

 

[kez19]

Nothing wrong with watching RT along with the other outlets like the BBC, they are all state propaganda in varying degrees.

For me when they have the slogan “question more” it shouldn’t be ie slag off the US and UK but let’s paint Scotland as wonderful in all it does kind of thing, if it’s meant to be alternative then by all means but question every government/organisation/political party out there then...