the survivor interview

People contacted for Ebola survivor interview:

Ahmed Jallanzo - photojournalist/fixer in Monrovia

John Poole and Sami Yenigun - NPR producers (http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/02/27/389308249/a-10-hour-ride-a-welcome-with-cola-nuts-a-sad-yet-hopeful-new-normal)

Sheri Fink - NYT

Debbie Doty - Medical Teams International

Dr. Kent Brantly - Samaritan's Purse (via FB)

Doctors Without Borders PR team

Umaru Fofana - Sierra Leonian Journalist, https://twitter.com/UmaruFofana

Clair McDougall - NYT reporter in Liberia

Kayla Ruble - Vice News

Ajani Shakanova - friend

Samwar Fallah - https://twitter.com/samzato?lang=en

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/health/how-ebola-roared-back.html?_r=0#

Ebola coverage (week 10)

I'm seeing more post-epidemic coverage stories now that the number of Ebola cases is slowing in Western Africa.

Vice News reporter Kayla Ruble wrote a good Act 2 piece about a young woman's life post-Ebola. The woman lost 19 family members, including her husband to Ebola and now has to rely on selling food at a market stall to feed herself and nine children (some hers, some the children of family members). It was interesting to read that men are not only the breadwinner of the immediate family, but also of the extended family. The thematic-leaning frame of this article is a strength. She does follow a central character, but draws from context and stats. The article flows well and includes good context. Her word choice is appropriate and not too sensational. The comments at the bottom of the article were actually kind of offensive, and I'm surprised Vice News allows them to be posted seemingly unchecked. My own reaction to this story is that I'm impressed. I imagined each step Ruble took to report it as I read it. In my opinion, she did a great job with the article. She found an interesting angle, took her own pictures and reported it from Liberia.

Last Wednesday, the New York Times ran an opinion piece by Bill Gates titled "How to fight the next epidemic." His analysis of the global response to the Ebola epidemic is well-reasoned and scary as hell. He writes, "The problem isn’t so much that the system didn’t work well enough. The problem is that we hardly have a system at all." He poses the tough realities that many people seem afraid to consider. What if Ebola were airborne? The fear that pulsed through the American public last fall was essentially unjustified because the fear didn't match the reality. What happens when a disease as deadly as Ebola spreads on droplets through the air like the Spanish flu, Gates asks? Some 50 million died as a result of that strain of influenza. The world is much more mobile today than it was back then. What would a pandemic like that look like today? His critique of the slow response seems justified. Doctors Without Borders is to be commended, but it's a nonprofit. Why should it carry the burden of epidemic on its shoulders, Gates asks? I think his word choice is cutting and intentionally so. He's disappointed with the failure of the response and fearful of a stronger virus during the next round. It's an opinion piece, so the frame is personal and opinion-based. I was surprised to see that no one has posted a comment about this opinion piece. I usually see hundreds of comments on NYT articles.


The other article I read this past week was about the rise in violence against women in Ebola-struck nations. This is another Act 2 article about a unique challenge that Ebola poses: The virus can spread through semen, so people must wait months before having unprotected sex. Julia Duncan Cassell, the minister of gender and development in Liberia, said, "Some men were not respecting the recovery protocol that Ebola survivors should observe and were infecting their spouses and female partners through unprotected sex." The result is a rise in sexual assault in the country. I haven't seen this issue reported anywhere else in the media, so I thought this article from Reuters was noteworthy. The spread of Ebola through semen appears to be confirmed this week. A woman tested positive and her only contact was with her boyfriend who is a survivor. The article also discussed the fact that more women have been infected with Ebola since they tend to be the caretakers. The frame is thematic, because it draws a public health angle, rather than a specific anecdote about gender-based violence. It relies on experts, though, and doesn't have any voices from women. I think it would be stronger with the expert voices as well as a story about a local woman's experience. I didn't see any comments posted.

Reminder to self, focus on: frequency, framing, word choice, social response and my reaction to the coverage.

Reading response to Wave (week 10)

Sonali Deraniyagala's words ripped me away from my reality for two days. I couldn't stop reading her story. I kept thinking that what happened to her was worst-case scenario, then she addressed that exact sentiment about halfway through her book. She wrote, "I am the unthinkable situation that people cannot bear to contemplate." Exactly. "This wild statistical outlier ... luckless mother that I am."

She somehow emerged from the wave that day, and has been using words to work through her grief. Her book is an incredible gift to the world. As a journalist, I'm really grateful that she wrote it. As a person, I'm even more grateful. The assumptions we make on a daily basis can be like knives to a grieving person. It's hard to sum up my takeaways, but in order to put into words how I feel about this book, I'll try.

• Nature can be cruel.
• The timing of events can be senseless.
• Events in life have no explanation. Blame and regret breed pain.
• Overcoming grief is a lifelong process.
• Friend networks can and do help, but the internal processes are what makes life livable again. 
• Writing is an incredibly cathartic process.
• Memories, though painful, can be an important part of the healing process.

God, even now reading back through lines I underlined, I see tear-stained pages, and my eyes well up again. It's really hard to write a blog response in just a few paragraphs about such a monumental life experience. Deraniyagala experienced something in a moment that few people ever have to face in an entire lifetime.

Her book is incredibly brave. She wrote through her grief and was brave enough to gift her words to the world. Thank you seems a paltry response. You have changed my world seems cliche. You have given me a new lens with with to view grief would be more accurate. Journalists need to read this book because, like she said, most of us would rather not even contemplate what happened to her. But we have to so that we won't sound like the assuming woman on the plane or the colleague or the couple at dinner. I don't think I'll ever see a single person at a restaurant the same way again. It really floored me that one of the reasons she didn't tell people was because she didn't want to hurt them. Of course, another reason was that because acknowledging the truth would make it more real and she used denial as a defense mechanism for a long time.

I can't begin to tell my own story to a stranger, so how could I begin to think I know anything about someone else's life? Life is long and complex and filled with so many experiences. Deraniyagala has let me inside an experience I've never heard about before. Hers. Of course I heard echoes of Angela Anderson's story in Deraniyagala's — the untouched rooms, the memories that reinforce what was real before that fateful day, the letting go of what will never be. But they were quite different, too. As I get older and hear more and more stories, I am struck at the diversity in our stories and equally important, the diversity in our reactions to what happens to us.

There is not one response to overwhelming grief. Deraniyagala's account of the wave is a perfect example of this. It's also a great example of how difficult it is to know what happening when you are caught up in the middle of something. She didn't even see the wave hit her family. She saw the terror on her husband's face and was immediately washed away. She sought out pictures of the Japanese tsunami with fascination because it offered a glimpse into what she lived through. I remember reading that the protests in the Arab Spring were similar. People didn't know what was happening on the ground level because they couldn't get a bird's eye view.

I think it's beautiful that time creates the space needed to heal. Deraniyagala will always have her memories. For a long time, they were too painful to sift through, but with time, she found she was able to return to them for healing, understanding and remembering.

Ebola coverage (week 9)

I just got an email back from a Liberian photojournalist who covered Ebola when it hit Liberia. Laura Welfringer interviewed him for Global Journalist last semester and produced Photo essay: Capturing the Ebola outbreak. I asked him if he could help put me in touch with an Ebola survivor. He said he can assist. I think it'll be incredible to speak with someone firsthand. I hope the interview comes through.

The coverage is interesting this week. For the first time ever, the U.S. has more cases Ebola cases than Liberia. Liberia hasn't recorded any cases since March 5. But Sierra Leone and Guinea are each reporting about 60 cases a week, according to the World Health Organization. The American health worker was infected while treating patients in Sierra Leone and was transferred to the National Institutes of Health on Friday. He is currently in critical condition. I like the information in this article, but I'm not sure I like the way it's framed. It's definitely eye-catching. Yes, the U.S. does have more patients at the moment than Liberia. But for months, Liberia had hundreds of cases a week. Liberia experienced 9,000 cases of Ebola compared with a handful of Americans who have been flown home to receive the best possible care. This is not an equal opportunity disease. It kills people who do not have access to care. Instead of focusing on the one person who is in critical condition, what about focusing on the dozens of others in Sierra Leone and Guinea who are still dying? The proximity news angle is relevant here. It's news because it's an American and because that American risked his life to help others. I do think that's noble. But I guess I'd like to see more rebuilding stories out of Liberia and more coverage of what people in Sierra Leone and Guinea are doing to quell the epidemic.

I really enjoyed this article from the Daily Beast about a 16-year-old Ebola orphan from Sierra Leone. The girl and her two brothers are receiving assistance from Street Child UK, an NGO working to support the Ebola orphans in their communities. The article mentioned James Kassage Arinaitwe's article "Ebola orphans in Africa do not need saviours." I really liked Arinaitwe's article and blogged about it when I read it late February. His premise is that when media organizations highlight an individual, others wonder why they were not chosen. Adopting children from tough situations makes the situation tougher for those left behind. So the idea of Street Child UK is that orphans will be supported in their own communities so they can stay there, go to school and maintain some semblance of normalcy. I like this article because it's honest, yet hopeful. It talks about an individual person, but does not frame her as a helpless victim. She is rebuilding. Her father protected his children by quarantining himself and as a result, saved their lives. The reporter also gathered great detail even though she interviewed through a translator and it looks like at times over the phone. I like it because it takes Arinaitwe's criticism into account, while still drawing on the power of the individual narrative.

Reading response - Week 9

Since I read chapter 7 in Anthony Feinstein's book about how 9/11 affected the media, I've been thinking about my own experience with that tragedy. I was a sophomore in college and living in Tacoma. I first heard about the plane crashing into the World Trade Center from my roommate. She often got up earlier than I did and would go for a long bike ride, come back, shower and then get ready for the school. That's when I would usually roll out of bed. On that morning, I remember she rushed in and turned on the TV. I sleepily asked her to turn it off and her response felt urgent and even panicked. She said something like, "Trace, look what's happening." That got me up. I looked over at the screen of the small TV and saw the tower burning. I wasn't wearing my glasses, but I could still see the flames. The broadcaster's voice was shocked. The image seemed surreal. After that, I don't have any other memories of 9/11. I'm not sure why. I know that I continued to watch and read the coverage. But the event itself did not jar my reality like it did for some people. It was a tragedy. It was terrible. But for me, it was really far away and I didn't know anyone involved. Like the many tragedies I'd read about in the 90s, Rwanda, Bosnia, the first Iraq war, it was sad. But unlike Rwanda, Bosnia and and even to some extent Iraq, the event itself did not involve nearly as many deaths. In Rwanda alone, between half a million and a million people were killed. I know that it is never fair to compare tragedies, but I wonder if the scale had some effect on me. It could be that I was young and unconnected from it. If the same tragedy befell New York today, I might have a much different take.

In terms of Feinstein's research, 9/11 hit at an interesting time. He was already researching war journalists and this event gave him the chance to research domestic journalists who had essentially become war reporters. He wrote that when lives are violently taken, it is difficult for people to grapple with because there is "no victim hierarchy." He also wrote that the shock and revulsion of the viewer lies on a sliding scale. Perhaps the event didn't hit high on the scale because I was thinking in terms of global events, but other Americans were thinking in terms of New York events or American disasters. In that case, it would be hard to find a recent event that killed that many Americans on American soil. The one significant difference between the war journalists and the domestic journalists who covered 9/11 was that the domestic journalists had higher hypervigilance scores. They were jumpier. My guess is that the war journalists just got used to the shelling and the constant sound of guns in the background, while the domestic journalists replayed the same event over and over again, but experienced it just once, so they didn't have a chance to get used to it. Or perhaps it's something else entirely. He explains that the domestic journalists had to re-watch the coverage again and again as they reported it in the following months, but war journalists are assaulted with war every day as well. So, it would be interesting to ask Feinstein what he thinks attributed to the increased hypervigilance of the domestic reporters. 

Ebola coverage (week 8)

I've lost count of the weeks that I've been monitoring Ebola coverage, but it has definitely been long enough to say I can notice trends and see similar frames emerging. This week, I read articles about the next Ebola hotspots, the immune response Ebola triggers, the lawsuit Nina Pham brought against Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, how the U.S. could have better handled the Ebola panic, Liberia releasing its last Ebola patient on March 5, and how Thomas Duncan's nephew perceived the media coverage about his uncle.

In the Vox article, Josephus Weeks recounted his family's experience with the coverage of his uncle's illness. I love this article because it uses an inner-sanctum source. Weeks says he and his family members hated seeing Duncan's photo everywhere. "I wanted to say, 'Please stop showing his picture,'" Weeks says. That green shirt. I applaud Vox for seeking out Duncan's family for this interview. As a reader, I now understand the anguish I could only assumed they went through. It's also mind-blowing to me that Duncan still hasn't been buried. Where is his body? I'd love to see some coverage about this.

The other inner-sanctum sourced article I really loved this week was about Nina Pham's lawsuit against Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. Pham says she was charged with caring for Duncan and the extent of her training was reading a few printouts about Ebola. That's insane. I was shocked to read how ill-prepared that hospital was and how inappropriately it responded. This lawsuit is going to teach staff the hard way about the importance of ramping up training and infrastructure. It was a good story, but I think that follow-ups are needed. What is the hospital doing now to train staff to manage Ebola or other outbreaks. This issue is not confined to this one hospital; it was just the one hospital that had to manage it without much warning. I'd like to see some national reporting on protocols, training and drills. Are hospitals working toward a better model of care or if someone else shows up with Ebola in Virginia, for example, will we have the same outcome.

The framing of stories continues to be monitoring-based. When someone from the West is tested for Ebola, it's typically reported. When someone from the West tests positive, it's also tracked. The coverage on Africa continues to look at progress. Liberia's borders are open and the country's last case in several weeks was discharged from the hospital. Overall, I think the coverage is pretty good. I have a sense of the situation in West Africa and how health care volunteers are affected. I do think the coverage of volunteers is slightly overplayed, but I'm sure it's helpful for people considering going to see that the risks are real. Again, more inner-sanctum stories with interviews from people who have been directly involved will be great. I look forward to more rebuilding stories. I think the media definitely needs to produce more of those.

Reading responses - Week 8

When I sat down to read Marie Colvin's Private War, I expected to meet a woman I couldn't really relate to. I thought she'd be taking one extreme risk after another and making decisions I just couldn't understand. Instead I traveled through a story that sounded believable. Complex, human and real.

Her experience in Sri Lanka was especially resonant for me. I traveled there in 2009 just a few months after one of the many truces over the years was called. Buses in Colombo were regularly bombed to draw attention to the violence in the north, and whenever I stepped on board, my heart would skip a beat. I never traveled farther north than Anuradapura. I never went to Tamil Tiger country. Our NGO operated there, and I had heard the horror stories. Mass graves, butchered children, genocide. I was sickened one night when I heard that Doctors Without Borders had sounded the alarm bell about what was happening in the north of the country and the government's response was to kick them out. I was stunned. We talked for hours about how our NGO couldn't follow suit. We had to keep our mouths shut so we could keep working. I argued with the country director about how maybe we wouldn't have so much work to do if the killings were halted. That was the beginning, even though I didn't recognize it at the time, of me stepping away from aid work and into journalism. I got sick of hearing about so many injustices and not being allowed to reveal them to supporters, donors, the public.

Marie existed to tell those stories. She had the right idea and got into the work for all the right reasons. But as time passed, the horrors caught up to her. I wonder what would have happened had one of those miscarriages turned out a different way? Would she have been like Kelly McEvers and had a crisis about her life decisions, backed away and examined what she was doing?

Marie Brenner did such a fantastic job of including details and describing Colvin's life. I loved reading about Colvin's childhood. The tension between her and her father was visceral. It definitely makes you want to sort out any lingering family grudges immediately.

The other aspect of her life I actually wanted to know more about were her relationships and her alcoholism. She tended to pick men who cheated. Why? And why alcohol? Did she love the escape? Was alcohol the same exercise as wading into war for her? Did it give her that same high? I suppose now it's impossible to know. But worth asking.

The details Brenner did provide were stunning. Reading the story made me feel, at least for awhile, that I knew Colvin. I agree that she needed more supportive editors. She needed rest. But I wonder if her attraction to destructive things would have ever lessened, even with more support. Perhaps she would have been miserable living a quieter existence. Perhaps she always knew that quiet life she talked about with Flaye would never materialize. Maybe that was the fantasy she promised herself, all the while knowing it was reporting that she wanted.