I'm currently creating a blog, based on scare mongering in the media, for my college course. I am doing a follow up piece on an article on swine flu I did. If anyone has anything to say on the subject it'd be good to get a response and if anyone has experience with swine flu, it'd be good to get a vox pox with you. =] http://specificdesignation.wordpress.com/a-sick-trend-in-journalism/ Any response would be appreciated.
Hi, cynical. I read your blog and I read the Daily Mail article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1235859/Why-swine-flu-kill---especially-havent-got-it.html I'm not a huge fan of the paper, but I think you were being a little unfair. If you read the WHOLE article it is quite a decent story and IS something people should worry about, imho. What is scare-mongering about telling people who are ill to probably have a second opinion? As scare-mongering stories go that one was a bad one. Imho, scare-mongering is saying something will happen before it has. An e.g, imho, is the BBC's coverage of the government cuts. I think it had a run in of over 3 weeks before anything was announced. They were telling us how awful everybody's life will be once the cuts start. I was scared. I don't care what newspapers print, tbh. You have to physically go out of your way to buy these things, and if you want the Dail Mail's brand of journalism you can have as much as you like. Some people like that type of journalism, obviously. It's the general scare-mongering espoused by the TV news that you should be writing about, imho. Most people don't have many options and it's never really that positive. I know the easy option is to pick on The Daily Mail, but I'd set your sites a little higher, darling (don't be worried it's just a line from Inception).
I think the American media did a pretty good job of fear mongering last year. You couldn't turn on the news without hearing "BREAKING NEWS...12 DIAGNOSED IN ALABAMA WITH SWINE FLU, AN ADDITIONAL 13 MORE IN CALIFORNIA. SWINE FLU EPIDEMIC SWEEPING THE NATION." it was a bit ridiculous, especially considering the death toll ended up being lower than influenza A, which hits the elderly and the youngest of the population the worst and kills a decent amount of people every year. the swine flu is supposed to be different from influenza A in that the swine flu effects people in my age group the worst, but I had the swine flu last year and it wasn't that bad. It wasn't fun at all, but I was only out of commission 5 days and I didn't run a fever higher than 101 so it was certainly never life threatening. My mom, who is almost 60, was also diagnosed with the swine flu and she was only out for about 3 days. It hit me a lot harder than it hit her but it still wasn't that bad for me. you should include this year's profits from the swine flu innoculation in your article.
