It seems a silver lining in the cloud of being confined is that we’re in touch more often with family and friends via messaging, video chat, virtual gatherings, and even good old fashioned phone calls just to talk to each other and not a customer representative. Several people I’m in close contact with have mentioned this as a notable difference in the past days and weeks.
I have a few more group chats and individual conversations going than usual. Besides check-ins, banter and discussion, a lot of coronavirus memes and information get passed around. And a lot of it is questionable, so I’ve been thinking about information and the dissemination thereof.
I can appreciate a clever meme that’s lol funny. Spam and unfounded information are vexing and cause me to question the sender’s sensibility. When I myself do this, i.e. send stuff I later find irrelevant or distasteful, I feel like a dummy. Then there are news articles and reports that are interesting to varying degrees when considering the publisher’s approach, such as the article with the above headline: “The USA in Fear.”
I was somewhat taken aback by the borderline sensational headline. Yes, there is confusion and anxiety here, but such a headline is overstated and does a disservice to disseminating accurate information.
My host-mom in Germany sent me snapshots of this article from her regional newspaper this morning as I’m standing in an quiet orderly line to restock on essentials:
She asks how things are here and what’s going on. In Germany, Angela Merkel called for the country to get it together and emphasized solidarity in combatting the crisis. Merkel’s announcements are worth watching for a compelling demonstration of understated steadfast leadership.
We are in regular contact, but when my German host-mom goes the extra mile to take and send me photos, which she never does, then she really wants to know the real story. The headline and article had given her the impression, or rather she had interpreted – a thin line – that things are falling apart here.
Aside from a misleading headline, my reading of the article is that its observations and reporting of the current situation here is at least a little distorted. For one thing it, its depicts the situation in the USA broadly as one entity whereas the reality is that the situation varies widely and greatly across states.
I assured my host-mom that things are not falling apart here, at least not yet and hopefully not at all. I also suggested she seek more balanced news sources. But my host-mom is used to reading her regional newspaper in print. How many quality print publications are there nowadays?
In a time when we are especially reliant on the news and accurate information from credible sources, the spread of misinformation and distorted narratives should be avoided as well. Whatever the news of is right now, Kate McKinnon as Angela Merkel is always there to save the day or good for a laugh at least.