Media Blackout: Why Newspapers Aren’t Reporting About Covid-19 Virus

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CHECK your social media feed. Check your WhatsApp groups. Check with the lad you work with who saw a video somewhere. It’s inescapable. The Coronavirus has ravaged its way across the globe from China to Carlow, with thousands infected every second and yet the media still refuse to report on it. Just what is it that they’re trying to hide?

Pick up any newspaper, and the stories they’re reporting about the Covid-19 outbreak are minimal. Yes, they speak about facts and figures, and yes, they convey as much information as is available to them at any given point in time; but what about your mate Dave who’s on a 5-day bender with the lads in Tenerife, who sent you a Snapchat of some English aul lad who keeled over at the pool and had to be carried away on a stretcher by six waiters?

Where’s the report on the WhatsApp video showing people in full hazmat suits entering a building in Dublin? The building may not actually be Dublin, the cars parked outside have odd number plates, and the footage may not be from this week; there’s about a foot of snow visible on the ground but surely it warrants an hour on the Six One News!

If the media really are blacking out the bad news about the Coronavirus, then the question becomes ‘why’?

It’s simple; to make more room for sports news, political news, celebrity gossip news, the weather, mundane ‘slice of toast that looks like Duncan Goodhew’ news.

There’s no money in panic, there’s no money is scare tactics. The media don’t want to put lurid, shocking, fear-mongering headlines on their newspapers; nobody would pick them up!

Online news sources don’t want to put unresearched, panic-inducing headlines on their articles. Who would even click them?

If Joe Duffy invited members of the public to ring in and tell unregulated stories that they heard somewhere about how they heard from a neighbour that there was a plane from Italy full of Chinese people that landed in Shannon yesterday, and now the half of Connacht has three days left to live, honestly, ask yourself; who would tune in to that?

Publications would fold overnight. The media aren’t looking to dirty their hands with something like the truth, no matter how revenue-generating it might be. They’re too noble, too honest. News media is an age-old practice, handed down through generations, with a pledge to give the public only the facts, with no speculations or scare-mongering.

So our advice; don’t trust them. Listen to your pal Lorraine from work who says the whole thing is a scam to drive up sales of hand sanitiser. She’s onto something, that one.

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