The Media and the Swine Flu

The news media skews the information it presents primarily for the purpose of organizing disparate and often contradictory information into coherent, easily digestible narratives. There are two primary archetypal tales that are typically spun in the wake of a health emergency - a political narrative and an aesthetic narrative. While these tropes produce very different emotional effects in an audience, they are alike in so far as they both generate a compelling and accessible emotional response. In April and May of 2009, a mutation of the influenza virus termed H1N1 - or ‘Swine Flu’ - spread from Mexico into the United States. Despite the large-scale warnings and preventative made by the Centers for Disease Control, the virus was ultimately far less deadly than the seasonal flu, and therefore the government and media response to the pandemic might rightly be characterized as excessive and overblown. However, by examining the ways in which this hazard was presented in popular print and television outlets, one can better understand how journalistic biases are generated and propagated in contemporary media.

The president in 2009 was Barack Obama, a democratic candidate whose stance on healthcare has centrally consisted in the attempt to institute a national American healthcare insurance program. Therefore, when the swine flu pandemic began to spread in April of that year, news outlets like the New York Times that have traditionally been sympathetic to liberal regimes largely did not question the vaccine and quarantine response policies of the federal Department of Health. Rather, they chose to present an aesthetically compelling narrative, in the attempt to provoke in a reader experiences of pity and fear. The classical Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed two theories of aesthetic response that news agencies consciously or subconsciously draw upon pathos and catharsis. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle lists pathos - or the appeal to an audience’s empathy - as a basic form of argumentation (alongside the logical or logos and identity-based or ethos forms of appeal). This manner of persuasion is so effective that it can often overpower logical argumentation and propel listeners into a state of emotional frenzy. During the outbreak of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, news outlets primarily provoked empathy by including small details about the lives of specific flu sufferers. In a New York Times Blog article “Toddler’s Death Stokes Flu Concerns,” reporters describe the attire of sick children who had not even been confirmed to have H1N1 influenza: “He napped in the emergency room, dressed in a Spider-Man sweatshirt and a surgical mask… she tried to comfort David, who was panting, crying and writhing, his little body draped with a navy blue hoodie” (Chan). Furthermore, likely because of humans’ evolutionary predilection to protect our young, the imagery of children in general is an effective means of quickly provoking heated emotions. Similarly, the image of a concerned mother is an evocative trope in the reporting of crisis and health risks. Such a manifestation of pathos is clearly show when, in the NYT article “Thousands Face a Balancing Act Over Flu Fears,” the journalist Monica Davey quotes 34 year old mother Diane McDonald as saying “You’re always out trying to protect your babies... when you’ve got these scary things like this stupid pandemic of swine flu” (Davey). In comparison to the dry facts of statistics and epidemiology, emotional appeals are often very successful at making large issues appear relevant to relevant to readers who might otherwise be fairly indifferent.

A second method by which news agencies frequently produce an aesthetic emotion during their reporting of an issue is through the tropes of tragedy. In his famous work of art criticism, the Poetics, Aristotle enumerates some of the necessary qualities that all tragic dramas share. In particular, he discusses how, in such a work, when a character of great station suddenly receives a reversal of fortune and recognizes their changed circumstances, an audience will feel a purgation of fear and pity. This ‘purgation,’ which until then had mostly been discussed in religious contexts, is widely known in our modern times by the original Greek word ‘catharsis’. The release a viewer feels when observing an epic theatrical decline is such a compelling aesthetic experience that many modern journalists will frequently structure their reporting of a story to reflect an Aristotelian tragic arc. In the 2009 reporting of the Swine Flu pandemic, this largely culminated in the exaggeration of H1N1’s risks, and in the melodramatic manner in which reporters discussed the disease’s victims. Declan Butler, in the Nature article “Swine Flu Goes Global,” frames the discussion of H1N1 in a way that disproportionately highlights the disease’s potential risks: “If transmission rates turn out to be high... mortality rates of even a few per cent could lead to millions of deaths” (Butler). The comedian Jon Stewart also called attention to the widespread fear mongering conducted by mainstream television news agencies by satirically calling the segment “Snoutbreak 2009: The Last 100 Days” (Stewart). As this comedy segment demonstrates, many news outlet greatly exaggerated the danger of this pandemic threat. Indeed, even the choice to call the disease ‘swine flu,’ as opposed to the more technical name ‘H1N1’ reflects the media’s penchant for treating real events as melodramatic tragedies. Therefore, an attempt to produce cathartic release of tragedy may be clearly seen in television and print news outlets’ reporting of the Swine flu outbreak.

Another source of bias in news media comes from the attempt to frame issues according to a partisan political agenda. Conservative news outlet who have traditionally been critical of Obama’s democratic administration - such as Fox News - demonstrated a partisan bias when they used the H1N1 outbreak as an excuse to address questions concerning Mexican immigration and the anti-vaccination movement. The swine flu pandemic began in Mexico, when in April of 2009, the virus quickly spread through a rural township. In response, the federal government quickly implemented an effective quarantine policy to prevent the further spread of influenza. Although the virus was largely spread to the United States by American citizens who had been visiting Mexico. For example, 150 cases of H1N1 influenza were reported at the St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, New York, after a group of eight schoolboys had recently taken a vacation in Mexico. Nonetheless, Fox News correspondents took the opportunity to rail against the federal administration’s purportedly insufficient border control policies. One such effort involves furthering the position that all legal immigration between the two nations should be entirely severed in response to the pandemic outbreak. In an April 28th television broadcast, Fox television conducted an interview with Republican congressman Duncan Hunter, who is shown saying “we ought to cut down on traffic cross-border” (4/28/09). Republican media outlets also argued that the Swine Flu pandemic was a sign of the administration’s inadequate policies on illegal immigration. In an April 25th blog post, conservative commentator and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin demonstrated a feeling of vindication in the face of apparently disproved ‘open border ideologues’:

We’ve heard for years that calling any attention to the dangers of allowing untold numbers of people to pass across our borders and through our other ports of entry without proper medical screening — as required of every legal visitor/immigrant to this country — is RAAAACIST. 9/11 didn’t convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality. Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will (Malkin).

Regardless of the factual validity of such a view, the blatant attempt to utilize political issues for the purpose of furthering anti-immigration policies demonstrates a clear partisan bias that distorts and obfuscates the real facts of the issue.

A second partisan effort mounted by conservative commentators in the face of the H1N1 pandemic was to portray federal vaccination efforts as dangerous and unsafe. In one television broadcast, Fox News interviewed Ken Holtorf, whom they describe as a ‘infectious disease specialist, but who self-identifies as an ‘anti-aging specialist’ (imediaethics). In that interview, Holtorf asserts that the H1N1 vaccine has the potential to cause autism in children, despite the fact that earlier that year, a federal court definitively concluded that there is no evidence to support a link between vaccines and autism (Reuters). Severally Fox News commentators have vocally held anti-vaccination stances, as was evidenced in an April 2nd interview with Donald Trump and an April 4th 2012 broadcast with Deirdre Imus (Edwards, Imus). Therefore, the decision to characterize the H1N1 vaccine as dangerous serves to both criticize the liberal administration in power and to simultaneously further a partisan position that is a recurring stance in Fox’s broadcasting.

Print and television news agencies attempt to make their programs interesting and compelling to audiences. They accomplish this task primarily by skewing information to be either aesthetically engaging, or to conform with an established political agenda. While the former form of bias - which is characterized by a provocation of pathos and catharsis - can be highly manipulative and obfuscate objective journalism, it can also be used in productive and healthy ways. Alain de Botton, in his 2014 book The News: A User’s Manual, argues that pathos can be an effective method of garnering empathy and emotional connections between audiences and those whose lives may differ significantly from their own (perhaps on the basis on nationality, race, or class). He also argues that tragedy is a basic psychological drive, and that explorations of cathartic narratives can be an effective way to examine and critique an audience’s implicit assumptions regarding the nature of the human condition. The other dominant form of bias in contemporary news reporting is political partisanship. While the overt and often critical stances of Fox news demonstrate how an opposition party may enact partisan bias, the positions of those sympathetic to a current regime may be far more insidious. In his 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Noam Chomsky demonstrates how government sources of information (such as the Centers for Disease control, during 2009 pandemic) often supply news outlets with established positions that print and television broadcasts uncritically report. While this chain of information was largely unproblematic in the case of the H1N1 outbreak, journalistic integrity requires that news providers challenge and critique the established structures of power to keep powerful figures in check. While Fox News’s reporting on the 2009 swine flu was very biased (and at times factually inaccurate), they at least make these prejudices known in a direct manner, instead of feigning objectivity (ignoring for a moment, their perhaps sarcastic catchphrase of ‘fair and balanced’). The fourth estate, as the practice of journalism is sometimes called, can never be truly objective. After all, reporters have a vested interest in both capturing the attention of an audience, and in furthering a particular political narrative. However, the workings of these partialities can be far less insidious if they are done intentionally and transparently, and if viewers attend to news outlets with an informed and skeptical eye.

Works Cited

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