This is not an attempt to undermine the seriousness of the disease. After several weeks of living in the 24-hour-media crucible, we all know how deadly the virus can be. With a lethality rate of 25-90%, Ebola is deadly serious. But is the way the western media is covering the epidemic some kind of a sick joke?
We got to take another spin on the Media Merry-Go-Round this weekend, when another medical professional, diagnosed with Ebola in Africa, arrived in North America for treatment. Dr. Martin Salia was flown into the U.S. on Saturday afternoon from his native Sierra Leone, exhibiting full-blown hemorrhagic fever. Doctors looking after his intake said Salia was in “extremely critical condition”. He died Monday morning in the hospital in Nebraska, bringing the grand total of U.S. Ebola casualties to two.
His arrival, however, gave us just the kind of carefully-choreographed viral video (literally) we are all sadly familiar with on CNN and other news outlets. A long-lens shot, through the airport fence in Omaha, as Salia was offloaded from a plane in a “containment bubble”. As he was transferred to a specially-modified ambulance, a split screen showed us still photos of the good doctor in happier times. Then, cut to an interview with a medical expert who told us what we already knew: the man was very sick and the health professionals tending to him are some of the best-trained in the world.
Salia was a legal, permanent resident of the U.S. married to an American citizen, who agreed to pay for the costs of transporting her husband to the United States for treatment. Such options are unavailable for the more than 5,177 people, at last count, who have been killed by Ebola in viral hotspots in West Africa. More than five thousand in West Africa, and two here at home.
This leaves one to wonder: why the grim fascination with all things Ebola here in North America? Why is CNN fanning the flames of hysteria with ludicrous on-screen captions like “Ebola: The ISIS of Biological Agents?” After all, it’s highly unlikely — with the exception of front-line healthcare workers at very specific institutions — that the average person has anything to worry about. Especially when eight of the previous nine Ebola patients treated in the U.S. have survived. We’ve also been told, over and over by the Media-Go-Round, that the disease is pretty difficult to catch — direct contact with the bodily fluids of a sufferer seems to be the most direct route to infection.
As is the case with so much of our media landscape, the coverage of Ebola is more about manufacturing fear than anything else. By showing us the same images over and over, the same grim pantomime of emergency and containment, our media reinforces the fear of disease as “other” — an alien vector come to wreak havoc on our peaceful shores. With this mechanism of terror in place, the media can then claim to assuage our fears, just so long as we keep riding on the carousel of manipulation.
