See the world media monitor on the Iraq war: with reports from (among others) Brazil, Tajikistan, Denmark, China and Nepal
openDemocracys world media monitor casts a glance at the global news coverage of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome also known as Sars, atypical pneumonia, or even Chinese pneumonia depending on where in the world you are.
Around 800 people have died worldwide and 8,500 been infected by the virus since it first reared its head in November 2002 in Guangdong, China. At the time, the world press was overrun by reports from Baghdad about the imminent war on Iraq.
Soon after, westerners in Asia began contracting the disease and the World Health Organisation (WHO) began flexing its public relations muscles.
China has seen the greatest number of deaths. One Beijing citizen approached for the media monitor declined to participate explaining, I am still trying hard to cope with what I hear and what I see. The Sars has been Chinas 9/11 we know the enemy, but it is invisible, and it is out there raging, and causing death.
At the WHOs global conference on Sars in Kuala Lumpur (17-18 June) the message was largely that the virus was under control, but may come back.
For a timeline of Sars, visit:
http://www.copd-international.com/Library/SARS-timeline.htm
Stay tuned for reports from Singapore, Russia and many other countries!
Visit a country by clicking on its name:
Italy
Carlo Urbani Europe on edge alarmist coverage
The Sars virus dominated the entire Italian media for at least two weeks.
The news of a new, deadly virus appeared in the press in the days following the fall of Baghdad but it was only after the death of an Italian doctor, Carlo Urbani, who was working on the virus for the WHO, that it became the main news story in newspapers and television.
Italian media covered the story of Dr Urbani and his work very carefully, in part simply because he was quite well known. He was the chief of the Italian section of Médecins Sans Frontières when the NGO won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.
After that, Sars dominated completely. Newspapers advised which countries were dangerous zones and they covered the number of the deaths in Asia every day. Details were given of the measures taken by governments to avoid the spread of the virus. Many pages were dedicated to the fear of the arrival of Sars in Europe.
The press may have exaggerated the dangers. One negative effect was that many people were afraid to go near the Chinese community in Italy. For a short while, Italy was the European country with most Sars-infected people. Actually, there have been nine suspect cases, fewer than in Germany and Britain. And it is a small number in comparison with the great alarm that the virus created here.
Francesca Caferri is staff writer of the foreign pages of La Repubblica and a teacher at the Istituto per la Formazione al Giornalismo in Urbino, Italy.
Beijing Isolation Area, celebrated as the first novel about SARS, is based on a true story and "tells sentimental love story between a photographer and a nurse working in the front line against SARS"
Source: People's Daily
Vietnam
Openness as an exception special task force panic from overseas
Unlike in its northern neighbour China, the issue of Sars received a quick and open response from the local media in Vietnam, partly because of the governments policy towards this mysterious and unknown disease. Perhaps this was the one time that the communist government was willing to listen to international advice and it did work!
The first case of Sars in Vietnam was discovered in February just after the Vietnamese celebrated the national new year Tet. The patient was an American businessman of Chinese origin, who, before Vietnam, had visited Guangdong and Hong Kong, and who had presumably picked up the virus there.
He was hospitalised in the Hanoi French Hospital, a private, foreign owned clinic located in the middle of the city. When the man eventually passed away in Hong Kong, and a dozen hospital staff fell ill, the authorities put the building under quarantine.
The WHO was called in very quickly after that, initially because of the presence of foreign nationals among the patients in Hanoi. That helped bring Sars to the public light. A task force was established within the Ministry of Public Health and the government issued a few directives allowing local newspapers to cover Sars in the most detailed way possible.
Not a day passed without reports on Sars (and how great the Vietnamese doctors were coping with it). The head of the task force appeared frequently in the media to give advice on how to avoid contracting the virus.
The government acknowledged the need to calm public worries caused by panicked reports from overseas sources, and tried its best to persuade the Vietnamese that they had the upper hand.
Meanwhile, the international media were singing the praises of Vietnams open approach to covering the problems and in April, the WHO was happy to back Vietnams announcement that it had managed to contain Sars.
Despite its tragic outcomes, Sars has done good to Vietnam in terms of making the case that open and honest attitude to social crisis could actually help sort out problems.
Nga Pham is a journalist for the BBC Vietnam Service in Hanoi.
China
Months of silence officials fired reporters living in hospitals
On 20 April 2003 the floodgates of Sars news coverage opened in China. Before that day, the mainstream Chinese media was silent about the spread of the disease. Since January, when the first cases of Sars appeared, the media had said as little as possible, and in the weeks up to 20 April some had even tried to put a positive spin on the outbreak.
On this dramatic day, two high-ranking officials, Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong were discharged. The headline on the China Business Times put it bluntly: Zhang Wenkang and Meng Xuenong are sacked for negligence. And from then on the media did its best to cover Sars massively and frankly.
Before that, in February, only local media covered Sars, which was first discovered in the province of Guangdong. The national media reported nothing.
On 26 March, the XinHua News Agency reported that Sars in Beijing was under control. That was the first time there was any mention of Sars in mainstream news. Beijing local media kept silent. However, one tabloid newspaper, the Beijing Youth Daily revealed the issue on 31 March under the headline, Masks sold-out for days.
On 2 April, China National Television (CCTV) interviewed the health minister, Zhang Wenkang. He spoke about the situation of Sars in China. From the following day onwards, more and more mainstream media mentioned Sars, but mostly with a tone of positive spin.
Then, front-page headlines splashed the news that Beijing had more than 10 times the number of Sars cases than the health minister and Beijing mayor had previously stated.
Some newspapers also carried excerpts of a speech by Beijing Party Secretary Lui Qi, in which he took responsibility for the Sars reporting debacle. As party secretary, I have the responsibility as a leader. I would like to present my sincere self-criticism here, he said.
The onslaught was in stark contrast to the coverage the previous weeks, when the press either ignored Sars or published glowing reports on how well the outbreak was being managed. A two-hour press conference by the new party leader of the Health Ministry, Gao Qiang, changed everything. CCTVs Channel 4 broadcast the press conference live, including footage of Mr Gao criticising the Ministry of Health for failing to provide up-to-date Sars figures.
For more than one month, the only big topic in the Chinese media was Sars. Some media even asked their reporters to sleep at the hospital in order to provide up to the minute interviews with doctors and patients. Ji Li and Zhang Haipeng of CCTV were the first journalists to live at the hospital. They became kind of heroes because of their work.
Many people said Chinese media did a right thing during the war against Sars. Almost all ordinary people learned about the dangers of Sars and how to combat it from the media. It helped Chinese people win the war.
Dongfang is an experienced journalist and a scholar of journalism. He lives in Beijing.
Croatia
Own health stories Sars death scores no headlines
The media in Croatia covered the story about Sars very seriously, but with some distance. After all, the virus spread very far from Croatia.
We have our own stories about health issues, like the salmonella epidemic in a few cities, and the story about child-deaths in cardiosurgery and one very big story about the illegal transplant of cells for human reproduction.
So, the Sars virus was in the newspapers on the foreign news pages. They counted how many people in the world were infected with the virus, and how many people died. It looked like statistics and made some journalists seem like bookies keeping scores on the total amount of deaths from the virus.
On the other hand, television images were pretty serious. They drew attention to the people with masks on the streets of Asia, and also showed the cleaning of the streets. And then of course, there were the terrible pictures from China, with officials putting bodies of victims into a lorry.
In the end, I must admit that in the Croatian media the Sars virus was not the topic for big headlines, front pages, nor for the first minutes of television news.
Zlatan Gelb is a Senior Cameraman for Croatian Television. He has a PhD in Information Sciences and Communicology. He teaches visual communication to future journalists at Croatia Studies, and basics of mass communication at the Academy for Theatre, Film and Television.
Taiwan
Class anxiety Chinese pneumonia the WHO as battlefield
The indeterminacy of Sars offered a space where myths and metaphors flourish and these myths and metaphors reflect our present cultural and political anxieties.
In Taiwan, the media representations of Sars reflect the anxieties to police, class, race and national boundaries.
In terms of how Sars is used to demarcate class and race boundaries, we see the media constructing the homeless as the dead corner in battling the war on Sars.
Foreign care-givers in the hospitals, foreign domestic maids, and illegal immigrants are targeted as walking carriers or moving carriers who invisibly transmit the disease to the general public.
However, on the positive side, these labels also enable many intellectuals to write to media forums, calling for more efforts to improve the medical and social conditions of the people in the lower social strata.
Chinas obstruction of Taiwans entrance into the WHO offers another case to examine how Sars is used to draw national boundaries.
While it is a political reality that Taiwan has been an independent state for more than fifty years, China still claims Taiwan to be one of its provinces and constantly threatens Taiwan with force, thereby causing much resentment among Taiwanese people. As a result of this tension, some pro-independence media calls Sars Chinese pneumonia.
Out of fear of Taiwan being recognised internationally, as an independent political entity, China lied to the international community about offering medical help to Taiwan in battling Sars.
The denial of Taiwanese peoples right to health by the WHO as a result of Chinas intervention is interpreted by Taiwans media and people not only as a gesture of Chinas cruelty, which discounts the safety of 23 million peoples lives in Taiwan, but also as a case of international injustice.
The battle over Sars via the WHO has had ironic effects in forging national boundaries. Internationally, China may appear successful in claming its hold of Taiwan, but its use of verbal violence has forced Taiwanese people into seeing themselves as victims of Chinas oppression; consolidating further a Taiwanese sense of one nation-ness.
In a democratic society, we hope that eventually it is the peoples voices and lives that matter, and not the coercion, violence, and lies of the state.
Fang-chih Irene Yang is Assistant Professor in the department of English at the National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan.
India
Social stigma taking ministers to task democratic transparency
Among the one billion population of India, the impact of the Sars scare was predominantly felt in the metropolises and in the vicinities of airports.
Both print and television media covered the unfolding developments of Sars adequately. Though the medias staple diet in India is politics, Sars got its fair share of attention in the national press. Many newspapers had Sars on their front pages and also carried analytical pieces about its history and range.
One Sars case especially was reported extensively in the Indian media. In April a 29-year-old economic migrant, Stanley DSilva, travelled from Indonesia to Mumbai via Singapore. A passenger sitting next to him on the plane was off-loaded in Singapore with a suspected Sars infection. DSilva tested positive for the virus a week later in the city of Pune. Several of his family members were infected, and subsequently the medical-staff were too.
The family had to go through the ordeal of facing the cameras. Pictures of Stanley DSilva clutching the Bible appeared, and he moaned and regretted bringing the virus with him at a time when he had come to India to attend the wedding of his sister.
Residents in the neighbourhood of the DSilva family left their homes out of fear and apprehension that they would get infected. The family was relieved after medical tests put them in the clear, but they had to go through the social stigma.
By May, there were no more than nineteen cases in India, a miniscule number in proportion to the population. The first case in India was reported in Goa and the second in Calcutta, and most were infected on overseas visits to the east.
The important lesson about the Sars coverage in India was that the media was successful in taking health officials and health ministers to task. Both at national and regional level the government was pressured to take pre-emptive action to tackle the spread of the virus. Even the civil aviation ministry directed all airlines flying to India from Sars-affected countries to sanitise their aircrafts. It also dealt stringently with those pilots who refused to fly to affected areas.
Indias defence minister, George Fernandes, was made to go through a medical test upon return from an official visit to China. He tested negative for Sars. There was no scope for allegations against India, when it was reported that communist China initially suppressed Sars facts.
It is important to emphasise that being a democratic nation state helps transparency although it is often the case in India that political hypocrisy, the Official Secrets Act, and misplaced priorities of the press dent the nations progress in many walks of life.
Ganapathi Reddy is a freelance journalist based in London. He was a senior reporter with ETV in New Delhi. In 2001 he won a Sky News Bursary to study for an MA in International Journalism at City University, London.
Nepal
Dysfunctional bureaucracy tourism and business Indian panic contagious
Nepal officially entered the Sars scare phenomenon in mid-April, when there was a blunder with a suspicious Sars carrier. A British woman coming to Nepal via Hong Kong was not admitted to the Contagious and Communicable Diseases Hospital in Kathmandu, in breach of a directive from the Minister of Health.
The following morning, the media reported the incident and also said that the two male companions of the British woman had threatened to kill hospital staff. The incident brought to fore yet another series of debacles of a dysfunctional bureaucratic machinery born of an inept government.
Later it was reported that the woman was only suffering from a common viral fever and that she had been admitted to another hospital for a general check-up. She was out again within days.
A few days later it was reported in the local media that a boy had contracted the dreaded virus in a pediatrics hospital in Kathmandu. This was categorically refuted by the hospital. It later transpired that the boys case had been under investigation for Sars but that the prognosis was an unrelated flu.
Both the media and the hospital bureaucracy displayed nothing short of amateurish immaturity.
Soon it was announced that all Royal Nepal Airlines flights to Shanghai and Singapore were cancelled. And there were reports of a rapid slump of inbound tourists from South East Asian airports, the entry route for the bulk of Nepals tourists.
It was a jolt for the slowly recovering tourism industry, reeling from the brunt of the last seven years of Maoist rebellion (although the 50th anniversary Mount Everest hype did recover some brisk tourist business).
A few weeks earlier China had closed the border to Tibet after acknowledging its Sars cover-up mistake. This hampered the lucrative Tibet-trade for a few Nepali businessmen who vie to make a little space for themselves in the market with cheap Chinese products in a Nepali economy overwhelmingly dominated by Indians and trade with India.
Nepal is not so much land-locked as India-locked. Every little ripple in India translates into havoc in Nepal. As Sars touched down in India, a panic hung on the average psyche that it would soon spread like a wildfire to Nepal, given the open and unregulated borders and millions of bodies crossing over each day.
Masked people were hardly visible in the bustling Kathmandu streets. Luckily for Nepal, the Sars virus folded its wings right there in India. It was also sheer luck that Nepal got through this scare without a single case of the disease contracted. An epidemic this fatal could never have been contained by its totally unprepared and under-financed government.
Anuj Mishra is Managing Editor of PlusMedium, an independent online journal of Nepal that was started to initiate an open dialogue process on democracy, development and human rights in the cyberspace when democracy was derailed in real space.
Nigeria
Ten weeks of government secrecy no questions asked panic all-round
Until 12 May, media coverage of the dreaded Sars in Nigeria was vague and distant. It was covered scantily and half-heartedly, like most foreign problems that seemingly have little or no consequence for Nigerians.
But on 12 May, Nigerias former health minister, Alphonsus Nwosu, announced the first death in Nigeria arising from a Sars infection. He said the victim, an unnamed Taiwanese businessman who was based in Nigeria, had died at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital ten weeks earlier.
The minister said that the victim contracted the virus on a business trip to the Guandong province of China. He said the deceased had been to both Lagos and Kano after China, and that he made contact with twenty-seven Nigerians who had all been placed under close surveillance by the ministry of health. Six of these individuals, he said, had developed flu-like symptoms and had been hospitalized in Kano.
The media hit the panic buttons with the ministers announcement. The Sars story was featured in various sections of the media, including health, travel, business and economy, tourism, international news, news and features, shipping, science, and insurance. Newspapers and magazines used photographs of people wearing masks to illustrate their stories, and television reports showed generous footage of similar images.
It was a riddle and a major embarrassment how the government was able to keep the death secret from the media for ten weeks. The incident suggested that the government had actively manipulated information related to the disease. But there was little outrage over this in the media or among the general public. No investigative reporting on the issue was spurred.
Before the government revelation, the daily newspaper, The Guardian (of Lagos) reported on 10 April that Africa Records First SARS Suspect. Their report stated that a man in South Africa was being treated for the virus, although doctors had not categorically confirmed that it was Sars.
Media reports thereafter reflected the panic in the country over the disease. Although much of the reporting was based on Sars in other countries, particularly on death tolls in Canada, Cambodia, China and other parts of Asia, there were frequent calls on the Nigerian government to act fast to protect its nationals from the dreaded disease.
In general, most reports were based on announcements made by government officials, particularly on their efforts to prevent the spread of the disease to Nigeria. These were reported uncritically.
The governments main response, which was generously reported, was issuing travel bans and advisories. Various government officials also made frequent announcements about the steps being taken to prevent the spread of the disease in Nigeria, including the purchase of Sars screening equipment for the four international airports. There were never any follow-up stories to find out if the equipment was actually bought or installed, or what the procedure for screening air-travellers was.
The Sars virus was frequently described in the media in frightening terms such as mystery disease, the new deadly disease, and mystery pneumonia. There were also various reports attempting to explain the phenomenon. Some media claimed that epidemiologists were working on a theory that cockroaches spread it.
All in all, the media was able to create massive awareness in the public about the existence of the disease and its symptoms, even though it appeared to have been at the mercy of government spin-doctors.
Edetaen Ojo is the Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda in Lagos, Nigeria.
Hong Kong
No Mainland influence democratic discourse attack on government
The reporting of the Sars crisis by the media in Hong Kong was a testimony to its independence and impartiality. The initial days were ably handled, brought the facts to the forefront, and even mentioned details as to the number of affected people. It was a striking contrast to the situation that prevailed in mainland China, where allegedly, certain facts relating to Sars deaths and even infected patients were suppressed.
Even after the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, the influence of the mainland in actual reporting has been minimal, apart from a few structural changes in the media establishment.
The Hong Kong media have consistently reported news relating to Sars from numerous perspectives. There was news of the virus from all over the world, as well as from its epicentre in mainland China. The media also engaged in critical analysis through articles by academics and others on topics ranging from public health and human rights related aspects of the Sars crisis to the larger issues of democracy and governance in Hong Kong.
Democratic discourse was at its peak. Civil society responded and even reacted to suggestions and criticisms expressed in letters to the editor and opinion pages of various newspapers.
The Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post, exemplified responsible civil society leadership when it invited readers to make financial contributions for the purchase of medical equipment for health workers. This received an overwhelmingly positive response from the public.
The press did not stop criticising the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) for its inept handling of the Sars crisis, its lack of foresight, and even for a lack of political leadership. On the other hand, the media extolled hospital staff and workers for demonstrating remarkable leadership, professional commitment and at times heroic gestures.
Transparency and accountability are not only values to be demonstrated by government. It is important that the media exercise their function bearing in mind these values and duties to society at large. These responsibilities need to be fulfilled always and not just in times of crisis management.
In the long run, the Hong Kong experience can help develop best practices for news reporting and newspaper publishing so we can overcome the tragic reality that at times prevail as reflected in Mark Twains words advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
C. Raj Kumar is a Lecturer & the Deputy Director of the WTO Law and Dispute Resolution Centre at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong.
Hungary
Foreign news story Iraq war format online hidden cameras in hospitals
The outbreak of Sars dominated the news in Hungary, just as in other countries. Until recently, news about the virus constantly played an important role in the headlines of the foreign news sections of daily papers and television programmes, although Sars did not affect Hungary directly. There have been no cases among Hungarian citizens.
The Hungarian coverage of Sars was very similar to that of other countries who were not directly affected there were daily reports about the spread of the virus and the number of deaths; about the countries considered dangerous to visit; and about the measures the governments of affected countries took. Also, there was interest in the precautions the Hungarian government showed in examining passengers at the airport arriving from Sars-affected countries.
The largest Hungarian online news portals Index.hu and Origo.hu both created separate Sars files containing all the reports and articles about the virus. The same method was applied in the coverage of the Iraq war and 9/11.
The tabloid press (both newspapers and television) also dealt frequently with the Sars virus. In a slightly irresponsible way, tabloid television took to making investigative reports using hidden cameras in hospitals, demonstrating the ignorance of hospital staff and the lack of hygiene. The main goal of these reports was not investigation or informative coverage, but creating sensationalism. And in this way it served only to raise potential fears.
Dora Vargha is a journalism student at ELTE University in Budapest, Hungary.
