164. What the Media Covers

Yesterday morning, on National Public Radio’s “The Takeaway," reproductive rights advocate Elizabeth Nash said that the news media—even the “liberal’ media—covers abortion not as a health issue, but as a political issue. Individual testimonies, the stories of women who have had abortions, and those who are grappling with the myriad health, economic, and family issues that go into the decision making, are rarely told in news stories on abortion. And while polls show that 70 or 80% of the public supports Roe v Wade, including many and maybe a majority of Republicans, the media is wed to the quickly divisive and often sensational politics of abortion. 

 

Similarly, the growing concern over full hospital beds and decreasing numbers of health care workers is not, in the press, tied to specific cases. We do not hear from the woman denied an operation, or her anxieties when it is postponed. We might occasionally—very occasionally—hear the word triage, but more often it is hidden in obfuscation. “Prioritizing” is softer than the harsh decisions implied by “triage.” 

 

And when news commentators interview nursing staff and hospital directors, the story is about tired and overworked staff members—the number of beds available, and how many patients a reduced medical staff can handle. The personal interview with a nurse who has quit is rare, and interviews with patients and their family members waiting for care almost never.

 

Covid itself is most often displayed in numbers and politics. The stories of suffering and death, which we saw from New York in Covid’s early days, are now rare. We are “normalizing” Covid much as we are normalizing the rest of the world, in terms of Red and Blue, R and D, Liberal and Conservative, West Coast, the NE, and the rest.  

 

Soon after the last presidential election, there must have been some agreement among newscasters that the election would not be talked about in terms of “allegations,” but in terms of lies and truth. It’s sometimes been a hard line to hold, but there is evidence that repeating the truth of the election results and the failures at overturning it—and pointing explicitly to the lies, is causing more and better discussion, even within the Republican party. 

 

How might the Covid world change if we concentrated on telling true stories of Covid patients and patients denied service, health care workers have been infected themselves, and those who have fled their professions entirely?