Panic! In the Press

It’s been just over a week now since lockdown measures have been introduced, and I have to say it’s remarkable and inspiring to see how (by and large) communities across the UK have been coming together (metaphorically, of course) to help prevent the spread of COVID.

Truly, from the very moving and nationwide ubiquity of the applause for the NHS on Thursday night, to the equally universal silence (at least in my neck of the woods) that the ‘clap for Boris’ campaign on Sunday night produced. There’s much to be proud of on our little island.

This is not to say that a week, and indeed what has already been much more than that for many of us, indoors isn’t having a detrimental impact on the mental health of many people; I know I certainly fit into that category. Surely then, now more than ever and even as a tory government has undertaken (to an extent), it should be the job of the press to leave profit driven and, to be frank, scaremongering headlines on the back burner for the time being. Certainly, rigorous reinforcement of the importance of the lockdown and insistence upon it being strictly adhered to should be reported, while (as common sense ought to dictate at such a sensitive time) snippets of rumour surrounding the illness should be left behind.

Of course, as I’m writing this piece after all, this has not been the case. Be it from the Daily Mails absurd article insinuating that Barnier gave corona to Herr Boris, to the endless picking up of the line that ‘Lockdown may last 6 months’ when medical staff haven’t even given an estimate yet. In fact, most early forecasting is looking at closer to the end of May to June for the lockdown to be lifted.

This simply isn’t healthy, isn’t helpful and isn’t the right time to whip up such fear – we are in the midst of a pandemic and it is not the job of the press to speculate and catastrophise at such an uncertain and, for many, scary time. Am I for one second implying that we should all pretend the world is sunshine and rainbows? Not at all. But it seems the press has left objective journalism so far in the past that it can’t remember how to do it when they really need to.

More than anything, this is a reflection of the increasingly toxic and politically polarising, profit driven world we live in: fear sells and fear gets you elected and there will come a day after this pandemic where the media and political parties will have time to reflect upon their reactions to this outbreak and, frankly, they should be ashamed. Will they be? Of course not! Their pockets will be nicely lined with the lucre of the dead.