the darkerside to rants

I just read this on the CBC:

Dr. Donald Low, the chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto who played a key role in battling the SARS crisis in 2003, says while there haven’t been any confirmed cases in Canada yet, it could be just a matter of time before they appear.

What irks me about this is the way SARS is presented again. Yes, there was an outbreak, and yes it quickly spread through air travel to other parts of the world, but the mortality rate of the “pandemic” was a joke back then and the world overreacted, not in the least the panic caused by the media.

And now we have the swine flu virus making the rounds, and yes it does seem to be more deadly than “even” SARS, but the only reason people get all worked up about it is because of the fact that it quickly sprang north into the “civilized” world.

Sure, there is a potential that we will face a pandemic in the not too distant future, but the way SARS was reported on (and now the Swine Virus) is doing more damage than good in my opinion.

Travel advisories and informing people is one thing. But getting people to panic (and most people do when they hear about deaths, regardless of the probability of actually dying from an infection) is counter effective. When Toronto declared the SARS emergency ERs and doctors where overrun with concerned people.

Doctor Low sinks even lower (unless he’s being misquoted) when he says:

“What you’re seeing here is the makings of a pandemic,” Low said. “You’re seeing a new virus that we have no natural immunity to. You’re seeing a virus that can cause disease, and in causing disease, can transmit from person to person.

Viruses always appear, this is why every year the flu vaccines need to be updated. Our bodies do have the ability to adapt to these changes as well and considering the amount of people who seem to have been infected and the number of deaths I’d say our immune system still can cope with it.

He then continues on:

“All it needs to complete that equation is the recognition that it’s spreading over a wide geographical area. And I think that’s what we’re hearing this weekend, that it’s actually happening,” he said.

Although he is right, unless it is a very virulent and aggressive strain (read, it transmits over the air, is not at all detected by the immune system and kills within a few hours after infection) this is, although a concern, no reason to panic.

Viruses (and in fact larger things like animals) have travelled with humans ever since we gained mobility. We have brought different species to other continents and used “biological warfare” in North America when we introduced the European Smallpox strain to the original inhabitants of North America.

But since then we have made huge progress, we know what a Virus is, we know what Bacteria are and we have a much better undstanding in how to fight the diseases. The fear mongering in the media right now though makes things worse in the short run, because everybody with a runny nose who was not even close to anybody from Mexico City will now wonder if s/he got infected and run to the doctors.

I really wish the media would be less sensationalistic and more realistic in their reporting, but then: “If it bleeds it leads”.

It seems almost daily newspapers in North America are shuttering their doors, in Canada TV Stations are being closed down, so far mostly in smaller towns but how much longer before large markets are being shuttered as well?

In Canada, CanWest, the parent to the National Post and Global TV (as well as Canada.com) appears to be in it’s death throws.

I am a bit torn over the news of the demise of the news media.

First and foremost the news media in the context of TV has long sold out to “headline grabbers” the “slang” “News at 11″ to denote useless crap and non-news is evidence of this.

Meanwhile in Canada (and from what I have read) the newspaper business underwent consolidation which means many smaller newspapers were fed most of their “news” from Headoffice and not sourced locally. Worse though is that most newspapers have turned to rebroadcasters for Wire Services like Reuters etc. Which means the real value of having the printed word and staff resources has gone out of the window. Instead of utilizing the power of a newsroom and staff reporters who have the time to follow up on leads, newspapers have reduced themselves to soap boxes for news bites.

The Internet, with it’s almost instantaneous “broadcasting” ability has not only beaten the newspapers but also the TV news, and where newspapers had the ability to be something else and make a difference they rather “gave in” to the arms race that is the Internet and lost… badly.

Of course this is nothing new. I met over the years people and reporters who still thought newspapers were important because things like Watergate broke in the New York Times and not on a TV station.

But those people missed the point back then and they do miss the point now. Just by it’s nature a newspaper could never compete with real time media like TV and the Internet. Sure, wire services, with people sitting in every remote corner of the world can punch out a news piece, but this is not reporting, nor is it what really is the strength of the newspapers. That is, in deep research and analysis that goes beyond yesterdays news.

The Internet is beating both TV and the Newspapers in the news reporting business. There was an earthquake somewhere? I read about it first in Twitter before it even hits the major websites. I do not know the details but I know it has happened. TV waits for the news hour (or a scroller at the bottom) and Newspapers may or may not get to it tomorrow if they don’t miss the deadline.

I call this post an “obituary of sorts” because even though the Newspapers are only put into their grave now the death has been going on for a long time. When the Newspapers decided to fight TV on “equal ground”, cut their newsroom staff down and turned themselves into a rebroadcaster of wire services they sealed their death.

I wish I could say I will miss the newspapers, but the reality is over the last ten years they have become less and less useful, not because something more superior (e.g. Blogs or the Internet itself) filled their role, but because they gave up. They came to a duel with a sniper and only brought a pocket knife. It wasn’t fair, it isn’t pretty but they are done for.

So no, this is not an obituary on the newspapers, if anything it is an obituary on a well informed public, on the ability for a few people to make a difference. Just imagine for a moment if Watergate would have happened in the 2000s. It would have been published on a blog, by two anonymous guys that nobody knows. It would have been dismissed as some crooks cooking something up. No harm would have come, no inquiry etc.

Just imagine how the future will look like without a respectable organization that really does work for the people. There is a reason why the newspapers once were considered the fourth power… It’s too sad that we were willing to sell one of the foundations of our democracy for a quick buck and quick news…. Just imagine we couldn’t know what Paris Hilton was doing tonight right when she’s doing it.

Yes, the last thing was sarcastic.

Rest In Peace, Fourth Power and News Organizations.