The media, inciting fear and xenophobia: The ethics behind reporting on COVID-19
Photo Caption: (NPR/Google Images)
Written by: Reedah Hayder
COVID-19 has already caused more than enough panic and anxiety around Canada and poor reporting in the media hasn’t helped the situation.
With over 2.1 billion mentions of COVID-19 in the media, it’s been difficult to slow down and talk about the ethics of reporting on this pandemic. The news and media have an obligation to tell the truth to the public. But it’s a hard line to walk as to not add unjustifiably to public anxiety through stories about toilet paper hoarding and fights breaking out in super-markets.
An article by CBC, headlined “'Herd effect': Social media images of empty shelves fuelling panic buying over coronavirus, says prof.” Directly underneath the headline, the article displayed featured photos of empty pharmacy shelves in Vancouver.
“It’s as though they didn’t recognize their own irony of obliviousness. The photos made me want to go out and panic buy but I’ve been trying to refrain myself,” said Amela Ahmad Zeia, a first-year medical laboratory science student at Ontario Tech University.
Narcity Canada’s Instagram posted photos of empty grocery shelves causing some in their comments to criticize this move. On one post titled, “Ottawa Public Health is urging people to stop stockpiling as Costco shelves are emptied” had comments such as “It’s amazing how [the] media can create such panic” while another user commented “Irresponsible journalism at its finest. Fear mongering for clicks.”
Previously Narcity Canada released a on Feb. 25 titled, “Canadians are being told to stock up on food as the Coronavirus could become a pandemic.” One user wrote, “Stop trying to scare the world.”
People are panic buying and there are some ways that grocery stores are trying to limit this. Costco announced they wouldn’t be allowing people to return any toilet paper while other stores are limiting in demand products to a certain amount per person.
As gatekeepers of information, the media decides what gets covered and how stories are told. So, when words such as ‘chaotic’ and ‘Chinese virus’ are used in headlines, it adds to the panic and to the xenophobic actions that many Asians are being subjected to.
Nicole Pham, a first-year new media student at Ryerson University, said it’s upsetting to see headlines saying “Chinese Virus” because people don’t read the full details, that headline is what stays with them.
Pham said she’s felt racially profiled when commuting from Mississauga to downtown for school. “People went out of their way to make sure I didn’t sit next to them by either intentionally putting their bags on the seat next to them or moving to the aisle seat as I would come near.”
Op-eds by the Atlantic titled, “China tries to take a victory lap” and “China is trolling the world” impose blame upon China. In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal, the headline read “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia”.
The World Health Organization has called on scientists, authorities and the media to avoid naming infectious diseases with names of geographical locations, as cited in its 2015 guidelines in naming new infectious diseases.
The Guardian featured a photo of a dead man in the street captioned, “The image that captures the Wuhan coronavirus crisis”. But there was no indication that the man had died of COVID-19. Instead the article said, “a woman standing near the man said she believed he had died from the virus.”
Pham said “The media plays a role in inciting fear and xenophobia when they use unrelated images of asian people implying that the virus is related towards a specific race” which causes people to fear “Chinese-looking” asians.
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