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Topic History of: Relentless negativity of the news media Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
Dr Strangelow |
Maybe it's because they all read humanities subjects at Oxford? |
wyot |
Interesting article in itself but none of the points you raise support or refute anything.
To take one: we don't know how many curren tly infected will die.
Does this shed any light on whether media presentation is problematic ("if it bleeds it leads"...) or the theory that the lockdown was needed or has influenced mortality rates in any way?
Nothing; either way.
It is for those stating that lockdown was needed and the Gov got it "right" to produce the evidence. And this must go beyond "the Gov followed the science..."
There is no "the science"; there is only the "science" the Gov chose to follow.
Why did they do this? |
Dr Strangelove |
The following very level-headed article, adapted from a Stephen Pinker book, hits the nail squarely on the head in explaining why we get a relentlessly negative stream of news stories. The sad fact is that bad things happen in an instant; while good things take time to come about. COVID-19 came as a bolt out of the blue.
We know that year-on-year death rates are more than double the norm - this isn't media exaggeration. We also know how overprepared the Nightingale Hospitals were in expecting a 'tsunami' of patients which didn't appear.
We know that the virus can be lethal to those who are susceptible.
We don't yet know what percentage of infected people will eventually die.
Ken would say the media were to blame for the lockdowns and restrictions because of their negative and hyperbolic news coverage early on. On the other hand, it's just as plausible to say the authorities were preparing for something based on scientific reasoning and mathematical modelling, which predicted a worse case scenario of 600,000 deaths without any interventions,
Anyway, I strongly reconnect you read the article:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/f...-media-negative-news |
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