TV in times of swine flu

BY Namitha Dipak| IN Opinion | 01/09/2009

MEDIA AND PARENTING

Namitha Dipak

It¿s been a positively riveting few weeks of television viewing. Starting with Michael Jackson¿s death, and then the swine flu outbreak, and more recently the contretemps of the BJP over Jaswant Singh¿s book, there was plenty of reason to keep me hooked to the box.

On the whole, the swine flu outbreak has given all of us a good reason to appreciate how "wired" we are, whether in terms of television, cell phones, Internet access, and of course the daily papers.  I appreciate the amount of work done by all the agencies to cover as many aspects as possible, including a focus on patients who recovered, statistical data giving mortality figures from different countries, regular inputs from doctors, and phone-in sessions.

It seemed that the focus was "it¿s better to be safe than sorry" and as a parent, I appreciated this the most.  This unprecedented focus on public health from the point of view of a potential epidemic was undoubtedly of great help to schools and other public institutions to put in place their own systems to control spread of the disease.   After the Aakriti episode where the young girl died from an attack of asthma while at school, there was already some awareness about the importance of having emergency management systems in schools. The swine flu outbreak has proved to be another testing ground. Schools in Delhi responded in different ways. Some closed for a few days after the outbreaks that were reported in Pune, while others continued after issuing cautionary notices about symptoms and maintaining strict vigil over the health of the students.

For me, the most important positive aspects of the television coverage was:

1. The spontaneity and relevance of information flow: apart from the phone-in sessions, occasionally anchors themselves chipped in with very relevant observations and asked for clarifications from the medical experts. This addressed topical issues, helped stem fears and approach things in a more logical manner. For instance, the issue about the use of masks in public areas was clarified very quickly in this manner.
2. Further links for information. While television channels have always publicized their websites for campaigns or other stories, it was truly public service to provide phone numbers, listings of public hospitals and precautions.
3. Statistics and medical information. The statistics of morbidity and mortality from different countries was useful, as also the important instructions about use of the medicines, getting tested etc. In this way, there was perhaps unprecedented coverage about medical information,.

What didn¿t work as well for me were the occasional interviews of hospital staff to find out why patient XYZ had died in spite of being at the hospital.  From the point of view of patient ethics and the possible escalation of panic, I felt that such live broadcasts were unnecessary. The same information could be conveyed without the live reportage. I also thought that the broadcast of a particular citizen journalist "expose" of a man whose pregnant wife was refused treatment, was a bit over the top. Even after getting an assurance that she would be treated, there was a further heated conversation between the man and a doctor that was broadcast without any significant addition to the content.

I think that such incidents demonstrate that investigative journalism seems to come naturally to many reporters even at this time. It happened with the Mumbai 26/11 reportage, and here again, although not so stridently. The third thing that had me a bit concerned was the incessant focus on this issue whether in special programmes or in the news throughout the day on the media. I felt that as a country, and with the Independence Day around the same time, we were laying ourselves open to some kind of terrorist attack when all attention was focused on this H1N1 virus.(In fact was a gnawing concern, which just goes to show how one¿s worries keep abreast of the times, earlier I just worried about accidents and simple fevers).   But overall, better sense prevailed all around, and the information flow helped rather than hindered in most part. 

Ironically, if anyone visits India today and reads the daily papers or surf TV channels, there is less coverage on swine flu and positively no sign of the "crisis" that it was threatening to become just a few days ago. Considering that concern has been expressed about a "second wave" of the outbreak, this is no time to relax our vigil, and this kind of sudden drop in quantity of information  (for whatever reason, most probably an embargo to stem panic reactions) can be dangerously deceptive.

For me, there are two lessons in this entire scenario:  one is that as a country, we need to get our act together in terms of public health, public information systems etc. and continue to use technology efficiently to spread awareness.   The other lesson is that in case anyone has any illusions about the direct proportion of media coverage of an issue and relevance of the information, this is the time when they need to get real. News is news for the broadcast and print media, and I suppose for anything beyond the current breaking story, we have our common sense, the doctor¿s number on the speed dial…and the Internet.

ndind@lycos.com