Reporting about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has presented a host of challenges and ethical dilemmas for journalists just as the epidemic has presented a host of challenges for health care professionals facing local resource shortages, rapid transmission, shifting protocols, and ethical decisions. In covering a disease outbreak media professionals have a symbiotic relationship with health care professionals as both professions play an important role in informing the public's decisions and perceptions as well as those of policy makers.
Although critics have focused on US reporters and media outlets whose coverage has been sensationalist and alarmist, the discussion in this article is based on a potential ideal—gold standard—for US journalists. These writers and photographers would likely concur with the perspective of WilkinsReference Wilkins1 that journalists share public health’s mission of prevention and mitigation and that they perform 3 primary functions during times of health crises: disseminating accurate information to the public, medical professionals, and policy makers; acting as the go-between for the public and decision makers and health and science experts; and monitoring the performance of institutions responsible for the public health response.Reference Wilkins1
In disseminating information, journalists covering the Ebola outbreak follow the same protocol as when covering many crises, such as natural disasters, epidemics, or even armed conflict. Their primary goal is to responsibly inform the public so that they can optimize prevention and safety while minimizing panic. This means getting as close to primary sources of information as possible and confirming that information with a second source. Just as health care professionals triage patients, journalists triage information. The 24-7 news cycle has made this process more difficult as journalists grapple with dueling pressures: confirming that their information is correct while meeting the demand for rapid updates.
Responsible media professionals understand their job is to proceed with balance and caution. Reporters should be asking themselves some important questions in the process. They need to consider whether reporting too much detail about the science of the disease will overwhelm a public that really only wants to know how they will be impacted personally. On the other hand, reporters might consider whether declining to present all of the science in order to report on a level that the greatest number of people will comprehend will simplify the health problem so that it misleads the public or reinforces superstitions about the disease’s causal chain and biological pathway.
Journalists also face an ethical dilemma when deciding whether to identify by name a patient who has contracted the disease in question. On the one hand, identifying patients by name humanizes a story, but on the other hand, doing so risks the loss of patient privacy. These are risks that the patient may not understand when giving consent. The concept of informed consent, which is standard policy in health care, is not fully developed in journalism. Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) does not apply to reporters,2 reporters need to appreciate the consequences of identifying those who have the disease, especially when there is stigma attached to the condition. For their part, health care professionals—who were customarily reticent about revealing a patient’s personal details to journalists long before the passage of HIPAA—need to appreciate that putting a human face on a crisis is a prime way to grab the public’s attention and may facilitate the wider dissemination of important information.
In the United States and other Western nations, media professionals might wonder if their coverage should narrowly focus on their own nations or communities or if, in the case of Ebola, their reporting should focus more on the West African nations where the suffering is greatest. Why only tell the personal stories of Ebola patients in the West? Why not humanize the thousands of victims in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia? Perhaps if Western media had been more attentive to Ebola’s tragic toll in West Africa, the rush to find treatments and vaccines might have begun sooner. On the other hand, journalists might also consider if focusing on West Africa engenders xenophobia and plays into existing prejudices or creates new ones. Such responses are reflected in the calls for a blanket ban of all flights carrying passengers from Ebola-affected countries. Also, one might today speculate whether the current tendency to dismiss scientific information—as exemplified by the climate science debate—would have been mitigated had the media faced earlier the ongoing consequences of a US Congress unwilling to acknowledge the expertise of scientists who, according to Favaro,Reference Favaro3 themselves “must be impartial arbiters of data, not political agents.”
Photojournalists play a unique role in covering a disease outbreak. They strive to balance literally putting a human face on the story with protecting the dignity and privacy of those most bearing the disease’s burden. Photojournalists who have returned recently from their reporting trips in Liberia have described their ethical dilemma in covering the Ebola story with humanity and compassion while at the same time portraying the grim reality of those suffering from the disease.4, Reference Du Cille5 Just as health care professionals grapple with prevention protocols, photojournalists have struggled to respond to mixed messages as to what precautions are necessary to protect themselves, because their work requires close proximity to Ebola patients.Reference Matloff6, 7
Journalists who embrace their role as a go-between for the public and decision makers or experts are hampered by the fact that they likely have no more than basic knowledge about health. The media industry has contracted in the face of economic losses and few news outlets have staff reporters who specialize in health coverage. The writers or photojournalists who are often dispatched to cover health crises—especially when the epicenter is in a developing country—are more likely to be those who have worked in rugged conditions such as war zones or scenes of natural disasters rather than health reporters who have a science background. Thus, a vital part of a functional symbiotic relationship between health care professionals and journalists is for the former to be mindful of the imperative to communicate clearly and forthrightly so as to facilitate comprehension of an epidemic’s science by journalists whose message will likely be the public’s primary source of information. As do journalists, researchers and epidemiologists must consider the audience they are trying to reach and communicate in a language that the broadest range of people will comprehend.
For the most part journalists provide the primary conduit for health officials’ messages to the public. Thus, it is in the interest of public health officials to do their part in providing the information that reporters deem necessary, not just the information that health professionals deem appropriate. The key to the symbiotic relationship is that members of both professions respect one another’s judgment of what they require in order to perform their respective roles. Moreover, despite frustrations with public misperceptions about Ebola—some of which have been fostered by irresponsible media coverage and some of which are the product of Internet rumors—it is the responsibility of public health representatives and medical personnel to be forthright and accessible in order to facilitate education of the public and counteract the misinformation. This is the best way for public health experts to stay on top of the story and to be out in front of any panic.
Unintended Consequences
In their determination to fulfill their role in disseminating information to the public, media outlets might seriously consider if the material they print or broadcast may have unintended consequences such as poor mental health outcomes. A growing body of research has found adverse psychological outcomes associated with high exposure to media coverage of crises.Reference Holman, Garfin and Silver8, Reference Silver, Holman and McIntosh9 On the other hand, concern about this consequence should be weighed against the possibility that too little coverage endangers the public by minimizing the need for precaution. In the case of Ebola, the media has a serious responsibility to inform but not inflame, motivate but not induce panic, and create empathy while not exploiting the victims. With new or unfamiliar crises these journalistic tasks become even more complex and politically risky.
The “Attention Cycle”: Journalism, Epidemics, and Pandemics
DownsReference Downs10 labels journalistic coverage trends “the attention cycle.” He identifies five stages. The first is the “pre-problem stage” when experts are aware of an adverse condition but the public has not yet caught on. This is followed by the “alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm” stage when the public is not only cognizant of a problem but also agitated. The advent of the third stage, “realizing the cost of significant progress,” arrives when the public realizes the economic, technological, or social costs of resolving a crisis. The “gradual decline of intense public interest” is after a discouraged public learns not to expect a quick cure. The final “post-problem stage” is when a problem has persisted long enough that it is no longer a focal point and “moves into a prolonged limbo.”
The “attention cycle” for coverage of epidemics and pandemics closely fits the model Downs describes. In coverage of health issues, the cycle’s stages are correlated with how close to home the disease seems to hit. For example, in the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, media response in the United States was initially slow when the disease appeared to be confined to high-risk groups such as homosexuals and intravenous drug users. At that time there was little interest by journalists except for those who worked in cities with large homosexual populations such as San Francisco. Thus, the wider public had not yet caught on to the outbreak. However, when there was found to be a risk to the general population—starting with the infection of hemophilia patient Ryan White who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion—media coverage intensified and the public was alarmed about the risk of contracting the disease.Reference Cullen11 Moreover, much of that early coverage, which characterized the behavior of the at-risk populations as aberrant, contributed more to the disease’s stigma than it did to understanding HIV’s transmission. Media coverage was most constructive when attention turned to precautions and behavioral changes for the public, most notably the use of condoms, and we arrived at the point when “safe sex” became a part of the lexicon.
Polling results found that at one time 75% of the public relied on news media for their information about HIV/AIDS.Reference Brodie, Hamel and Brady12 This figure is salient when considering the roles and responsibilities of journalists in covering the Ebola outbreak. But the imperative for accuracy and balance is even greater than it was for HIV/AIDs when we take into account that an increasing percentage of the public relies not on traditional news platforms for information but turns to Internet sources that may or may not be reliable. A Pew Research Center poll in 2013 found that 50% of Americans rely on the Internet for news, which is still fewer than rely on television, and the percentage that rely on the Internet among people ages 18 to 29 years is 71%.Reference Caumont13 Thus, rumor can turn to accepted fact at the speed of broadband.
As with HIV/AIDS the intensity of Ebola coverage by Western journalists has correlated with what population is most impacted. Global reporting about Ebola has intensified with the spread of the disease to the West, despite the fact that the toll of the disease is far greater in West Africa and that the outbreak began in early 2014.14 Unlike the coverage of HIV/AIDs, the Ebola story has intensified in the United States to a disproportionate level using words such as “crisis” or “panic” to describe the disease’s status even though there have been only 3 confirmed cases in the United States plus 2 others in people who were first symptomatic while still overseas.15 Most important, if coverage of both diseases had begun at the onset of their respective outbreaks—regardless of the victims—prevention would likely have been better served.
Collaboration
The role that health care professionals play in media coverage of epidemics cannot be overstated and their role in any confusion about the risks and severity of the health concern in question cannot be minimized. Wilkins (p 252) discusses this in the case of the SARS outbreak in 2002:
Media coverage of SARS also makes visible an important fulcrum to leverage stronger media coverage: co-operation from the other institutions in society. While SARS focuses attention on the necessity for government cooperation, other institutions in society, particularly the scientific and medical community, are equally implicated. Journalism can be only as good as the quality of information journalists have to work with...
As GarrettReference Garrett16 points out, “If you assume the media will behave abominably, they probably will. If in contrast there is a level of mutual professional respect in play…events will unfold more smoothly for all concerned.” During the 1947 smallpox outbreak editors and health officials met and designed a mutually agreed upon strategy for persuading the population to support a vaccination campaign.Reference Garrett16 In 2014 this story may sound quaint, but a version of this collaborative scenario is certainly a worthy goal. Skype or other electronic forms of communication have replaced the conference room as the venue for discussion; but for journalists the motivation—a desire for a seat at the table—remains the same. This seat at the table comes with the need to trespass professional boundaries for the common good. It did the mission of global health little good when, for example, Margaret Chan, the Director-General of the World Health Organization declined to meet with journalists at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, earlier this year.Reference Das and Sotomayor17
It is important to understand that responsible journalists are not an impediment to the mission of public health professionals. They can even be an extension of that work, but only if they not only are supplied with high-quality information but also sense that nothing is being withheld. It is the withholding of information by health officials rationing information on the basis of what they think the public deserves to know that sends journalists down a path in search of details they suspect are missing. Nothing motivates writers or photographers more than the suspicion that they are being kept out of the loop. If this happens early in the outbreak, misinformation takes on a life of its own. Like any pathogen it may be difficult to contain and the transmission may be hard to stop even if we understand the pathways.
Conclusions
The Ebola outbreak illustrates well the dynamics and challenges of the symbiotic relationship of journalists and health care professionals and scientists, especially in the era of the rush of the 24-7 news cycle. While the ideal described in this commentary is far from fully realized, the importance of transforming the gold standard practice to the observed practice cannot be minimized. Going from the theoretical to the applied is critical for public health.
Some commentators have said that in the United States there is not an outbreak of Ebola but rather there is an outbreak of panic,Reference Barriaux18 the source of which is largely that portion of the media that, in the rush to beat their competitors, hypes every bit of information beyond its significance. However, once we wade through the fog of the 24-7 news cycle and sift through the hyperbole that has plagued the coverage of the Ebola crisis in the United States, there are key roles and responsibilities journalists possess that public health professionals can embrace. Journalists can be more cognizant of the information they report—despite the pressures of the digital era—and health experts need to work together to convey consistent clear messages and respect the role that journalists serve as their conduit to the public. Too often scientists and medical personnel utter the word “media” as if it is an expletive.
For journalists meeting the responsibilities of informing rather than inflaming requires vigilance regarding use of language in headlines and story content. For example, a newspaper story about a company that manufactures personal protective equipment said that “hospitals across the country brace for potential new cases of Ebola, which has already killed more than 4,500 people....”Reference Abrams19 There was no sentence clarifying that 4500 people had died on the other side of the globe at that point and not in the United States, even though by the time this was published this should have been common knowledge. Furthermore, there was “potential” for new cases but if ever a qualifying sentence was appropriate, this was an instance. We have seen headlines such as “Man with Ebola-like symptoms taken to Boston hospital” accompanied by a sub-headline reading “Not likely patient has Ebola, hospital says.”20 These kind of headlines amplified the public’s nervousness. At one point a pregnant passenger from Mali, a West African country far from Sierra Leone or Liberia, who fainted on a jet-bridge was eventually removed by first responders wearing hazmat suits.Reference Allen and Stafford21 Meanwhile, elsewhere a headline read, “This is how you get Ebola, as explained by science.” Reference Tam22 The latter serves the public and public health far more than do the others, but unfortunately headlines such as the latter were initially scarce, although they have become more common.
The challenge going forward will be to get ahead of the story from the onset racing against the pace of digital dissemination of misinformation. Refining the dynamics of the media-science relationship is essential to containing the outbreak of misinformation and mistrust—just as when we work to contain any other contagion.
You have
Access
Reporting about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has presented a host of challenges and ethical dilemmas for journalists just as the epidemic has presented a host of challenges for health care professionals facing local resource shortages, rapid transmission, shifting protocols, and ethical decisions. In covering a disease outbreak media professionals have a symbiotic relationship with health care professionals as both professions play an important role in informing the public's decisions and perceptions as well as those of policy makers.
Although critics have focused on US reporters and media outlets whose coverage has been sensationalist and alarmist, the discussion in this article is based on a potential ideal—gold standard—for US journalists. These writers and photographers would likely concur with the perspective of WilkinsReference Wilkins1 that journalists share public health’s mission of prevention and mitigation and that they perform 3 primary functions during times of health crises: disseminating accurate information to the public, medical professionals, and policy makers; acting as the go-between for the public and decision makers and health and science experts; and monitoring the performance of institutions responsible for the public health response.Reference Wilkins1
In disseminating information, journalists covering the Ebola outbreak follow the same protocol as when covering many crises, such as natural disasters, epidemics, or even armed conflict. Their primary goal is to responsibly inform the public so that they can optimize prevention and safety while minimizing panic. This means getting as close to primary sources of information as possible and confirming that information with a second source. Just as health care professionals triage patients, journalists triage information. The 24-7 news cycle has made this process more difficult as journalists grapple with dueling pressures: confirming that their information is correct while meeting the demand for rapid updates.
Responsible media professionals understand their job is to proceed with balance and caution. Reporters should be asking themselves some important questions in the process. They need to consider whether reporting too much detail about the science of the disease will overwhelm a public that really only wants to know how they will be impacted personally. On the other hand, reporters might consider whether declining to present all of the science in order to report on a level that the greatest number of people will comprehend will simplify the health problem so that it misleads the public or reinforces superstitions about the disease’s causal chain and biological pathway.
Journalists also face an ethical dilemma when deciding whether to identify by name a patient who has contracted the disease in question. On the one hand, identifying patients by name humanizes a story, but on the other hand, doing so risks the loss of patient privacy. These are risks that the patient may not understand when giving consent. The concept of informed consent, which is standard policy in health care, is not fully developed in journalism. Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) does not apply to reporters,2 reporters need to appreciate the consequences of identifying those who have the disease, especially when there is stigma attached to the condition. For their part, health care professionals—who were customarily reticent about revealing a patient’s personal details to journalists long before the passage of HIPAA—need to appreciate that putting a human face on a crisis is a prime way to grab the public’s attention and may facilitate the wider dissemination of important information.
In the United States and other Western nations, media professionals might wonder if their coverage should narrowly focus on their own nations or communities or if, in the case of Ebola, their reporting should focus more on the West African nations where the suffering is greatest. Why only tell the personal stories of Ebola patients in the West? Why not humanize the thousands of victims in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia? Perhaps if Western media had been more attentive to Ebola’s tragic toll in West Africa, the rush to find treatments and vaccines might have begun sooner. On the other hand, journalists might also consider if focusing on West Africa engenders xenophobia and plays into existing prejudices or creates new ones. Such responses are reflected in the calls for a blanket ban of all flights carrying passengers from Ebola-affected countries. Also, one might today speculate whether the current tendency to dismiss scientific information—as exemplified by the climate science debate—would have been mitigated had the media faced earlier the ongoing consequences of a US Congress unwilling to acknowledge the expertise of scientists who, according to Favaro,Reference Favaro3 themselves “must be impartial arbiters of data, not political agents.”
Photojournalists play a unique role in covering a disease outbreak. They strive to balance literally putting a human face on the story with protecting the dignity and privacy of those most bearing the disease’s burden. Photojournalists who have returned recently from their reporting trips in Liberia have described their ethical dilemma in covering the Ebola story with humanity and compassion while at the same time portraying the grim reality of those suffering from the disease.4, Reference Du Cille5 Just as health care professionals grapple with prevention protocols, photojournalists have struggled to respond to mixed messages as to what precautions are necessary to protect themselves, because their work requires close proximity to Ebola patients.Reference Matloff6, 7
Journalists who embrace their role as a go-between for the public and decision makers or experts are hampered by the fact that they likely have no more than basic knowledge about health. The media industry has contracted in the face of economic losses and few news outlets have staff reporters who specialize in health coverage. The writers or photojournalists who are often dispatched to cover health crises—especially when the epicenter is in a developing country—are more likely to be those who have worked in rugged conditions such as war zones or scenes of natural disasters rather than health reporters who have a science background. Thus, a vital part of a functional symbiotic relationship between health care professionals and journalists is for the former to be mindful of the imperative to communicate clearly and forthrightly so as to facilitate comprehension of an epidemic’s science by journalists whose message will likely be the public’s primary source of information. As do journalists, researchers and epidemiologists must consider the audience they are trying to reach and communicate in a language that the broadest range of people will comprehend.
For the most part journalists provide the primary conduit for health officials’ messages to the public. Thus, it is in the interest of public health officials to do their part in providing the information that reporters deem necessary, not just the information that health professionals deem appropriate. The key to the symbiotic relationship is that members of both professions respect one another’s judgment of what they require in order to perform their respective roles. Moreover, despite frustrations with public misperceptions about Ebola—some of which have been fostered by irresponsible media coverage and some of which are the product of Internet rumors—it is the responsibility of public health representatives and medical personnel to be forthright and accessible in order to facilitate education of the public and counteract the misinformation. This is the best way for public health experts to stay on top of the story and to be out in front of any panic.
Unintended Consequences
In their determination to fulfill their role in disseminating information to the public, media outlets might seriously consider if the material they print or broadcast may have unintended consequences such as poor mental health outcomes. A growing body of research has found adverse psychological outcomes associated with high exposure to media coverage of crises.Reference Holman, Garfin and Silver8, Reference Silver, Holman and McIntosh9 On the other hand, concern about this consequence should be weighed against the possibility that too little coverage endangers the public by minimizing the need for precaution. In the case of Ebola, the media has a serious responsibility to inform but not inflame, motivate but not induce panic, and create empathy while not exploiting the victims. With new or unfamiliar crises these journalistic tasks become even more complex and politically risky.
The “Attention Cycle”: Journalism, Epidemics, and Pandemics
DownsReference Downs10 labels journalistic coverage trends “the attention cycle.” He identifies five stages. The first is the “pre-problem stage” when experts are aware of an adverse condition but the public has not yet caught on. This is followed by the “alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm” stage when the public is not only cognizant of a problem but also agitated. The advent of the third stage, “realizing the cost of significant progress,” arrives when the public realizes the economic, technological, or social costs of resolving a crisis. The “gradual decline of intense public interest” is after a discouraged public learns not to expect a quick cure. The final “post-problem stage” is when a problem has persisted long enough that it is no longer a focal point and “moves into a prolonged limbo.”
The “attention cycle” for coverage of epidemics and pandemics closely fits the model Downs describes. In coverage of health issues, the cycle’s stages are correlated with how close to home the disease seems to hit. For example, in the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, media response in the United States was initially slow when the disease appeared to be confined to high-risk groups such as homosexuals and intravenous drug users. At that time there was little interest by journalists except for those who worked in cities with large homosexual populations such as San Francisco. Thus, the wider public had not yet caught on to the outbreak. However, when there was found to be a risk to the general population—starting with the infection of hemophilia patient Ryan White who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion—media coverage intensified and the public was alarmed about the risk of contracting the disease.Reference Cullen11 Moreover, much of that early coverage, which characterized the behavior of the at-risk populations as aberrant, contributed more to the disease’s stigma than it did to understanding HIV’s transmission. Media coverage was most constructive when attention turned to precautions and behavioral changes for the public, most notably the use of condoms, and we arrived at the point when “safe sex” became a part of the lexicon.
Polling results found that at one time 75% of the public relied on news media for their information about HIV/AIDS.Reference Brodie, Hamel and Brady12 This figure is salient when considering the roles and responsibilities of journalists in covering the Ebola outbreak. But the imperative for accuracy and balance is even greater than it was for HIV/AIDs when we take into account that an increasing percentage of the public relies not on traditional news platforms for information but turns to Internet sources that may or may not be reliable. A Pew Research Center poll in 2013 found that 50% of Americans rely on the Internet for news, which is still fewer than rely on television, and the percentage that rely on the Internet among people ages 18 to 29 years is 71%.Reference Caumont13 Thus, rumor can turn to accepted fact at the speed of broadband.
As with HIV/AIDS the intensity of Ebola coverage by Western journalists has correlated with what population is most impacted. Global reporting about Ebola has intensified with the spread of the disease to the West, despite the fact that the toll of the disease is far greater in West Africa and that the outbreak began in early 2014.14 Unlike the coverage of HIV/AIDs, the Ebola story has intensified in the United States to a disproportionate level using words such as “crisis” or “panic” to describe the disease’s status even though there have been only 3 confirmed cases in the United States plus 2 others in people who were first symptomatic while still overseas.15 Most important, if coverage of both diseases had begun at the onset of their respective outbreaks—regardless of the victims—prevention would likely have been better served.
Collaboration
The role that health care professionals play in media coverage of epidemics cannot be overstated and their role in any confusion about the risks and severity of the health concern in question cannot be minimized. Wilkins (p 252) discusses this in the case of the SARS outbreak in 2002:
Media coverage of SARS also makes visible an important fulcrum to leverage stronger media coverage: co-operation from the other institutions in society. While SARS focuses attention on the necessity for government cooperation, other institutions in society, particularly the scientific and medical community, are equally implicated. Journalism can be only as good as the quality of information journalists have to work with...
As GarrettReference Garrett16 points out, “If you assume the media will behave abominably, they probably will. If in contrast there is a level of mutual professional respect in play…events will unfold more smoothly for all concerned.” During the 1947 smallpox outbreak editors and health officials met and designed a mutually agreed upon strategy for persuading the population to support a vaccination campaign.Reference Garrett16 In 2014 this story may sound quaint, but a version of this collaborative scenario is certainly a worthy goal. Skype or other electronic forms of communication have replaced the conference room as the venue for discussion; but for journalists the motivation—a desire for a seat at the table—remains the same. This seat at the table comes with the need to trespass professional boundaries for the common good. It did the mission of global health little good when, for example, Margaret Chan, the Director-General of the World Health Organization declined to meet with journalists at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, earlier this year.Reference Das and Sotomayor17
It is important to understand that responsible journalists are not an impediment to the mission of public health professionals. They can even be an extension of that work, but only if they not only are supplied with high-quality information but also sense that nothing is being withheld. It is the withholding of information by health officials rationing information on the basis of what they think the public deserves to know that sends journalists down a path in search of details they suspect are missing. Nothing motivates writers or photographers more than the suspicion that they are being kept out of the loop. If this happens early in the outbreak, misinformation takes on a life of its own. Like any pathogen it may be difficult to contain and the transmission may be hard to stop even if we understand the pathways.
Conclusions
The Ebola outbreak illustrates well the dynamics and challenges of the symbiotic relationship of journalists and health care professionals and scientists, especially in the era of the rush of the 24-7 news cycle. While the ideal described in this commentary is far from fully realized, the importance of transforming the gold standard practice to the observed practice cannot be minimized. Going from the theoretical to the applied is critical for public health.
Some commentators have said that in the United States there is not an outbreak of Ebola but rather there is an outbreak of panic,Reference Barriaux18 the source of which is largely that portion of the media that, in the rush to beat their competitors, hypes every bit of information beyond its significance. However, once we wade through the fog of the 24-7 news cycle and sift through the hyperbole that has plagued the coverage of the Ebola crisis in the United States, there are key roles and responsibilities journalists possess that public health professionals can embrace. Journalists can be more cognizant of the information they report—despite the pressures of the digital era—and health experts need to work together to convey consistent clear messages and respect the role that journalists serve as their conduit to the public. Too often scientists and medical personnel utter the word “media” as if it is an expletive.
For journalists meeting the responsibilities of informing rather than inflaming requires vigilance regarding use of language in headlines and story content. For example, a newspaper story about a company that manufactures personal protective equipment said that “hospitals across the country brace for potential new cases of Ebola, which has already killed more than 4,500 people....”Reference Abrams19 There was no sentence clarifying that 4500 people had died on the other side of the globe at that point and not in the United States, even though by the time this was published this should have been common knowledge. Furthermore, there was “potential” for new cases but if ever a qualifying sentence was appropriate, this was an instance. We have seen headlines such as “Man with Ebola-like symptoms taken to Boston hospital” accompanied by a sub-headline reading “Not likely patient has Ebola, hospital says.”20 These kind of headlines amplified the public’s nervousness. At one point a pregnant passenger from Mali, a West African country far from Sierra Leone or Liberia, who fainted on a jet-bridge was eventually removed by first responders wearing hazmat suits.Reference Allen and Stafford21 Meanwhile, elsewhere a headline read, “This is how you get Ebola, as explained by science.” Reference Tam22 The latter serves the public and public health far more than do the others, but unfortunately headlines such as the latter were initially scarce, although they have become more common.
The challenge going forward will be to get ahead of the story from the onset racing against the pace of digital dissemination of misinformation. Refining the dynamics of the media-science relationship is essential to containing the outbreak of misinformation and mistrust—just as when we work to contain any other contagion.
Editorial Note: Ms. Lubens is a former photojournalist who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize 5 times—including for coverage in wartime Iraq—and has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist.