Coverage on Ebola this week included the usual suspects: the call for more assistance, rates of infected people, schools and borders opening in Liberia.
It also included some unusual suspects. Craig Spencer, the NYC doctor who contracted Ebola in Guinea, wrote a piece about his experience as an Ebola caretaker turned patient for the New England Journal of Medicine. Naomi Campbell held an Ebola Fundraiser in which she auctioned off her old clothes and donated the money to the Ebola fight. The Guardian questioned whether this sort of activity helps or hurts Africans. Al Jazeera ran an opinion piece from a man who believes aid and adoption agencies hurt communities more than they help them. He said the article in the New York Times about an orphan named "Sweetie" would prompt couples to try to adopt Ebola orphans, but that type of thinking only perpetuates the stereotype of the helpless African victim. Communities need to be empowered to raise their own orphans through strengthened education programs and public health centers. Swooping in and rescuing a victim does not help a community.
I've been monitoring Ebola coverage with a daily Google Alert, and his week, after about a month of reading those alerts, I was able to identify outlier coverage. I'm going to focus on this coverage because I think it adds an element of complexity to the coverage. In his article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Spencer berated the media and the politicians. He wrote that the media, rather than informing the public, inflamed fears with "flashy headlines." They "fabricated stories about my personal life and the threat I posed to public health, abdicating their responsibility for informing public opinion and influencing public policy," he wrote.
According to Spencer, the media failed in its duty to inform and educate the public about Ebola. I think it's interesting that he included influencing public policy as part of the media's duties. Is that part of our job to influence policy? I suppose if policies are flawed, good reporting will bring that to light and change them. So question is: What is the media supposed to communicate about Ebola? It seems in this case, our job was to quell fears, not prompt them. As gatekeepers, we should have made the story less about Spencer and more about the thousands of people who have Ebola in Africa. But it seems the proximity news value got in our way. Spencer asserts that the media should have quelled fear through public health-focused reporting. I wonder what the national conversation would have been had the media done that.
The other two articles are fascinating because the authors point out the way we frame Africa in our everyday thinking. Africans as victims. Africans as dispossessed and unfortunate. Africans need saving. These are all tropes that we need to actively resist, as Sommers et. al. pointed our in our reading last week. I think James Kassaga Arinaitwe brings up a fascinating human reaction that we don't consider when we use anecdotal leads: People will be compelled to help the main character. Stories like the one about Sweetie uses an orphan to show the plight of thousands of orphaned children. One natural response is the desire to help. But Arinaitwe argues that adopting Sweetie does not help. It introduces the possibility for corruption and leaves other orphans feeling bad about themselves because they were not chosen. He asserts that strengthening communities and mobilizing them to care for their own orphans is more powerful than adoption or any other type of aid. The way we write stories affects the way people act. It's good remember this. It doesn't necessarily mean we need to write stories differently. Bringing awareness to a new group of orphans is good. The story starts the conversation. It is the community's job to act appropriately.
It also included some unusual suspects. Craig Spencer, the NYC doctor who contracted Ebola in Guinea, wrote a piece about his experience as an Ebola caretaker turned patient for the New England Journal of Medicine. Naomi Campbell held an Ebola Fundraiser in which she auctioned off her old clothes and donated the money to the Ebola fight. The Guardian questioned whether this sort of activity helps or hurts Africans. Al Jazeera ran an opinion piece from a man who believes aid and adoption agencies hurt communities more than they help them. He said the article in the New York Times about an orphan named "Sweetie" would prompt couples to try to adopt Ebola orphans, but that type of thinking only perpetuates the stereotype of the helpless African victim. Communities need to be empowered to raise their own orphans through strengthened education programs and public health centers. Swooping in and rescuing a victim does not help a community.
I've been monitoring Ebola coverage with a daily Google Alert, and his week, after about a month of reading those alerts, I was able to identify outlier coverage. I'm going to focus on this coverage because I think it adds an element of complexity to the coverage. In his article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Spencer berated the media and the politicians. He wrote that the media, rather than informing the public, inflamed fears with "flashy headlines." They "fabricated stories about my personal life and the threat I posed to public health, abdicating their responsibility for informing public opinion and influencing public policy," he wrote.
According to Spencer, the media failed in its duty to inform and educate the public about Ebola. I think it's interesting that he included influencing public policy as part of the media's duties. Is that part of our job to influence policy? I suppose if policies are flawed, good reporting will bring that to light and change them. So question is: What is the media supposed to communicate about Ebola? It seems in this case, our job was to quell fears, not prompt them. As gatekeepers, we should have made the story less about Spencer and more about the thousands of people who have Ebola in Africa. But it seems the proximity news value got in our way. Spencer asserts that the media should have quelled fear through public health-focused reporting. I wonder what the national conversation would have been had the media done that.
The other two articles are fascinating because the authors point out the way we frame Africa in our everyday thinking. Africans as victims. Africans as dispossessed and unfortunate. Africans need saving. These are all tropes that we need to actively resist, as Sommers et. al. pointed our in our reading last week. I think James Kassaga Arinaitwe brings up a fascinating human reaction that we don't consider when we use anecdotal leads: People will be compelled to help the main character. Stories like the one about Sweetie uses an orphan to show the plight of thousands of orphaned children. One natural response is the desire to help. But Arinaitwe argues that adopting Sweetie does not help. It introduces the possibility for corruption and leaves other orphans feeling bad about themselves because they were not chosen. He asserts that strengthening communities and mobilizing them to care for their own orphans is more powerful than adoption or any other type of aid. The way we write stories affects the way people act. It's good remember this. It doesn't necessarily mean we need to write stories differently. Bringing awareness to a new group of orphans is good. The story starts the conversation. It is the community's job to act appropriately.
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