The struggle with covering news about coronavirus

I’m always trying to see both sides, a side that tells the story of a cruel, calculated work filled with bad intent, and the story about how negative results could be the effect of good intent.

The coronavirus news coverage is getting a lot of criticism, saying the media is whipping people into a frenzy. That’s a story that I can believe because fear creates ratings for news as people tune in for updates. That’s the business side of the media.

There is also another side. The fact that to spread a message far and wide it has to be repeated over and over. Ask any business how many times they had to tell people what they do with advertising before they became widely known in their industry. The answer will always be a lot. And that’s the issue. When someone hears about the coronavirus for the 20th time they may start to panic, of course it’s possible others are only hearing the message for the 1st time. Not everyone is a daily consumer of the news.

In cases like coronavirus, both of these can be true. Of course it could also be true that it is bad enough to be this worried, only time will tell.