Thin line between responsible reporting and too much of a bad thing

By JEREMY LAURANCE

The universal truth that you cannot please all the readers all the time was hammered home by an email sent to the Independent.

"What we see every day is Sars from all of the media. We are so tired of it and we feel so bored. There is nothing new. It wasted too much of everybody's time. What we are really interested in is genital herpes."

The author had a point. Sars has infected a few thousand people; millions have herpes.

And when the toll from Aids, cancer and heart disease is considered, it is reasonable to ask, has the media gone overboard on Sars?

The Sars story had three characteristics that made it irresistible.

It was a fatal disease, it was spreading round the world at an extraordinary speed and it was causing panic.

Compare that with the usual scares - vitamin dangers, suntan warnings - which are the daily fare of health reporters. No contest.

In the early weeks, the story remained buried on the foreign pages. The war in Iraq saw to that. It was only when Baghdad fell that Sars got star billing.

Two factors helped it fly on to the front pages. First, the pictures - the image of people wearing masks on the streets is a powerful one, conveying an image of poisoned cities.

Second, a frightening warning from the World Health Organisation.

The WHO has always told travellers how to protect themselves against disease - use a mosquito net, wear a condom, get vaccinated.

But it had nothing to offer for Sars. So, for the first time in its history, it told people to stay at home.

A ban on travel to Hong Kong in early April raised a flurry of interest but it was not until it was extended to Toronto, a western city, that the story became front page news.

The Independent described Sars as "the first global epidemic of the 21st century" - a judgement confirmed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, the director-general of the WHO.

Another factor driving the coverage was the knowledge that the next flu pandemic - there were three in the last century - is overdue.



The 1918 pandemic is thought to have killed up to 20 million people.

The Sars outbreak was a dress rehearsal for the big one that is to come - and that expectation fuelled the publicity it attracted.

Then came the backlash. While some papers demanded tougher checks at airports and protested that not enough was being done, others mocked the panic.

The News of the World advised readers that more people were killed falling downstairs each year than had died of Sars.

The Sun suggested that the virus came from outer space, landed on Everest and was blown into China by the prevailing winds.

The New Statesman wittily, and not inaccurately, said that the answer to Sars was ... soap.

Since the disease now appears to be receding, the view is growing that the media over-reacted.

Looking for a good scare story after the end of the Iraq war, we found it, the charge goes, in Sars.

Moreover, the damage to the economies of the Far East and Toronto by panic has far outweighed harm caused by the virus.

Striking the right balance in a scary story such as this is never easy.

But I don't believe we were guilty of hyping. The risk was real and the danger of underplaying the threat, if anything, greater.

Sars is a highly infectious disease that spread to 28 countries in as many days.

One case was enough to seed the outbreaks in Hong Kong, Hanoi, Singapore and Toronto.



Little more than 20 years ago, when Aids emerged, it had killed a few score people. Today, its toll stands at more than 20 million.

Sars was never going to be like Aids, but two months ago there was no way of knowing what it might be like, or how far it would go.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the fact that the picture looks different from the way it looked at the end of March does not mean the media got it wrong.

Rather, thanks in part to the publicity the disease got then, we can feel a little safer today.

- INDEPENDENT