Comment

Apocalyptic Media: The Case of Bird Flu

Joost van Loon

(Source: http://www.who.org)

I was just going through a stack of old WHO files and discovered this image of emergent viruses in the 1990s. I noticed that Influenza A H5NI is already 'on the books' almost ten years ago as an 'unexpected outbreak'. A question suddenly occurred to me: 'why do some viruses c.q. bacteria hit the headlines whereas others are allowed to remain obscure?' I was also wondering whether a 'radical media critique' along the lines set out in Fifth Estate would have something useful to contribute here.

When considering the role of media in generating concern over particular risks it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the mediation of risks is above all a matter of 'apparent arbitrariness'. In this sense, a critique of media becomes a simple complaint over a lack of consistency or perhaps a lack of concern for certain risks facing the public. Yet at the same time, we should ask whether the mediation of risk is an inherent 'public good'. That is to say there is a general feeling that the public have a right to be informed. This is revealed in the widespread sense of indignation when cases are being revealed, showing that people have not been properly informed, as for example, with BSE and vCJD (the risk of contracting vCJD and BSE was never properly considered in the UK until scientific evidence could no longer be interpreted in any other light), SARS (the Chinese government withheld vital information about its incidence and spread) and HPV (various western governments continue to fund condom promotion campaigns whilst failing to stress that condoms do not adequately prevent contamination with HPV via sexual intercourse).

The role of media is often complicit in this. It is a well-known fact that corporate news media tend to strongly rely on official sources of news and press releases. There is no exception in terms of the coverage of public health affairs. In other words, what hits the buttons in terms of news about health risks is more often than not already pre-mediated (or pre-meditated?) by official sources. Journalists cannot be expected to keep abreast of all medical-scientific research; they do rely on expert-intermediaries such as university-based researchers and international agencies. Sometimes (as in the case of BSE/vCJD) such intermediaries are able to address issues that are not adequately addressed by official public health sources. This suddenly flares up and takes the form of a panic. There are several good examples regarding carcinogenic foodstuffs (e.g., a recent discovery of higher-than-recommended levels of benzene in fizzy drinks), but perhaps the most famous ones involve periodically resurgent scares around risks associated with the contraceptive pill.

Sheldon Ungar (1998) in 'Hot Crises and Media Reassurance: A Comparison of Emerging Diseases and Ebola Zaire' (The British Journal of Sociology 49 (1): 36-56) makes a useful distinction between 'the rhetoric of endangerment' and 'the rhetoric of containment'. Whereas the former is embraced by media when emergent risks 'flare up' as panic, the latter is far more common. In most cases of potential risks, risk-mediation takes the form of assuring the public that the government is able to control most contingencies through a combination of science and technology, legal enforcement and commercial back up (e.g., pharmaceuticals). The problem for media is that there is only news-value as such in the rhetoric of endangerment. The rhetoric of containment can only be invoked as valuable news in an indirect fashion, to dispel (alleged) 'myths' about health risks (e.g., the issues concerning the triple 'MMR vaccination' in the UK, which was once suggested to be linked to a rare form of autism).

The issue, however, that is rarely addressed is whether the need to inform the public is a public good as such. To be an informed citizen is also to be responsible for one's own actions in the face of the information received. As information on food packing expands, we are thus expected and even legally required to inform ourselves of the information; we are thereby placed in a position of accountability vis-à-vis the possible negative consequences of consuming the product. There is a point at which this leads to an information overload, which in turn disables people from acting altogether. They are paralysed by an ambient fear that all we can do is engage in risk behaviour. This in turn generates anxiety, apathy or resentment.

Media can thus be seen as diffusion machines. They relieve the state of responsibilities by displacing them onto individuals. This, one could argue, is a form of risk-privatisation, which in turn feeds various opportunistic commercial enterprises, such as the insurance business which have a tendency to favour insurances against risks that are relatively rare or insignificant.

Finally, there is the issue of political opportunism. The risks that are selected as 'significant' are always connected to political interventions from which some could derive significant political gain. New Labour hammered on about the risks of contracting vCJD from BSE-contaminated beef because it had a scent of the blood of the severely wounded Tory government. As soon as the roles were reversed, New Labour embraced much more of the rhetoric of containment with the exception of risks with which it could manipulate public perceptions.

As the war on terror shows, anxiety and fear can be highly effective in generating public support for potentially unpopular policies such as ID cards. Every risk entails an opportunity. Crime feeds the commodification of private security, the depletion of the ozone layer spurns the development of UV-filtering skin creams and HIV single-handedly revived the condom industry. We should always suspect some other motive at work when a, rhetoric of endangerment flares up, and Bird Flu is no exception.