Virus thread, the political one.

[beeatnik]

It's not a death cult, it's reporting the facts on the ground. And the numbers on Friday are different than the numbers on Monday. You never assume a reader knows, it's why Reuters is notorious for explainer paragraphs for things like who The Beatles are.

Every...single...SARS-CoV-2 story has to mention that there have been thousands of deaths?

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...avirus/616630/
Such acts are preventable. Most happen because of failures to take basic precautionary measures. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Trump has repeatedly failed to take such measures, and he continues to dismiss the threat, denying simple facts and implying that some form of exceptionalism will exempt Americans from suffering. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Conley has had ample opportunities to do what Trump hasn’t done—speak objectively about the medical facts. Simply doing so would emphasize the importance of wearing masks and taking the virus seriously.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation...irborne-spread
Experts on aerosols and the coronavirus said the change constitutes a profound shift in understanding of how the virus that has claimed almost 200,000 lives in the United States spreads. However, the updated two-page explanation provided little new guidance on how to protect against airborne transmission.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/opini...nio/index.html
Early Tuesday morning, Trump used Twitter to advise the nation to learn "to live with Covid" as if it's like the seasonal flu, and not a deadly new pathogen that has killed more than 210,000 Americans -- and more than one million in the rest of the world -- in less than eight months.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/o...-patients.html
The people who come to my hospital seeking care are largely underserved with underlying conditions. As they struggled and wheezed, they may have thought of their own mortality in the context of the more than 211,000 lives cut short — too many in their prime, healthy one day, dead a week or two later.

Let me put it in bike terms, the above is the equivalent of those two corny dudes, Phil and Paul, describing drafting on every single telecast of every single stage of the TDF. But I think in this case it insults the intelligence of a larger cross section.

The Fake News Crowd is very sensitive to this journalistic convention (manipulation).

[theflashunc]

Yeah. It's still big news. We're on track to lose a World War IIs worth of Americans from this thing in less than 1/4 of the time.

The numbers matter for putting a size and scope on it.

To not do so would be incredibly irresponsible in a world already swimming with misinformation, lies by omission and outright lies. The only counter to that is the truth, and that means running the death number as part of whatever nutgraf you've got in the story. And if you're not putting it in, your editor or the copy desk is sure as hell calling for it.

[beeatnik]

To not do so would be incredibly irresponsible in a world already swimming with misinformation, lies by omission and outright lies. The only counter to that is the truth, and that means running the death number as part of whatever nutgraf you've got in the story. And if you're not putting it in, your editor or the copy desk is sure as hell calling for it.

Do you believe that a significant percentage of the readership of the New York Times, LA Times or CNN is not aware that we're at 200K plus?
And they need that data point in every story?

[theflashunc]

Do you believe that a significant percentage of the readership of the New York Times, LA Times or CNN is not aware that we're at 200K plus?
And they need that data point in every story?

Yeah, because you never assume your reader knows that data point. And it's the single fact the underlies all of the coverage of the government's failure and our societys failure at large in responding to this. It's the biggest fact.

So yeah, any story that doesn't have that in a nutgraf needs to go back to news writing 101.

[beeatnik]

so, the question is why European publications and American publications don't report the fatality numbers in the same manner?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...id-coronavirus

https://www.ft.com/content/6a5e61f5-...d-98f1dfa107ad

https://www.france24.com/en/20201006...-19-infections

[BBB]

Journalists use this technique, be it from a sporting scandal through to 200,000 + people dying. Also, the numbers change on a daily basis. In a couple of weeks it will be 225,000 dead. The dead are part of the story.

See these as an example of this technique at work:

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/lance...cess-1.1089564

https://www.westhawaiitoday.com/2020...-race-in-2012/

[theflashunc]

so, the question is why European publications and American publications don't report the fatality numbers in the same manner?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...id-coronavirus

https://www.ft.com/content/6a5e61f5-...d-98f1dfa107ad

https://www.france24.com/en/20201006...-19-infections

If that was the question that would have been your first question. You're a more salient media critic when discussing the under-reporting the impact of COVID in California farm communities.

But to answer your question, every publication is different. In the US with US-based media? The death toll in the US continues to be the number one story.

I quite like the Guardian story, would have been nice to place the healthcare worker deaths in the larger context of the overall US fatality rate though.

[beeatnik]

You're a more salient media critic when discussing the under-reporting the impact of COVID in California farm communities.

The underreporting of those numbers, ie, 80% of infections in CA post-April occurring in the Latino community, has a bigger impact on the mitigation of the crisis than the total number of deaths (at this point). But tomato, tomatoe.

[Mark Kelly]

But, it doesn't make any sense to want to win a position if you are not prepared to do the heavy lifting the position requires.

You have just described >90% of the senior management in large corporations to a T.

[Too Tall]

You have just described >90% of the senior management in large corporations to a T.

When I was management, thank dog that's over, answering to senior officials asking for "studies" or "look into this for us"....I'd mutter under my breath "tell me your desired outcome so that I can manipulate the actual truth to suit your needs why don't cha? But let's spend a fortune and considerable human resources so you can ignore the facts, cool?"

Leave us digress to higher planes of thought, New England Journal of Medicine for instance. Apologies for posting a link without further comment, this is a must read:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812
Yes Yes Yes there are footnotes. Here is the lead....
Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing.

[Bob Ross]

Do you believe that a significant percentage of the readership of the New York Times, LA Times or CNN is not aware that we're at 200K plus?
And they need that data point in every story?

Because it's a different data point in every story! The "plus" part is changing day-to-day. And it would be irresponsible journalism to just cite "200K plus deaths" in Monday's, Wednesday's, and Friday's articles because that ignores how rapidly the total number is increasing.

[ides1056]

Mike Pence proved that you can indeed polish a turd to a high gloss.

[72gmc]

Are there any journalists in the V House? I went to a school without a journalism major (but with an award winning paper!). I don't get the 100k or 200K Death Cult reporting. I dont recall reading a major story in any respected publication that didn't include the number of deaths in the US. Do editors believe that there are readers who on Friday will lose track of the astronomical fatality numbers from Monday? Here's what I'm curious about and full disclosure this is about the virus and not Trump (cos Dog told me Trump will be gone by Feb 2021). The population of the United States is 331,526,317. Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, and, ah, Belgium have a combined population of 336,115,344. In the United States, covid-19 has taken 216,760 lives. Western Europe's major nations with Belgium thrown in for statistical purposes have lost 163,327 lives.

This is a good article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...ndemic/616548/

I did major in journalism but it's been a few years (and then a few more) since I worked in the field. Aside from the other answers you've received, I will add my own take: a journalist prioritizes transparency and accountability as a personal ethical code. One reason to keep citing salient data points--such as recoveries, deaths, and infections--is this ethical code. Accountability in journalism means information is provided to inform and be verified by readers. So, a consistent tally of total deaths is part of a description of the situation that can be fact-checked and, if necessary, improved, all to serve the mission of informing the reader.

In this current environment, I'll guess that there are a lot of professional journalists who want to be sure misinformation is countered by information. They know the news crowd--not just the fake news crowd, the news crowd--is susceptible to the strategy of the repetitive message.

Regarding the EU examples, in many cases you have to consider the format. The France 24 article, for instance, provided links to the same information the NY Times adds to the text of the article. Part of this is the business of digital news--clicks to additional pages translate to revenue--and part of this is the tenets of each individual news outlet. Some are fine with long articles, others break up long articles by editing several short articles that link to a common data table.

[beeatnik]

^Thanks for the reply. I should have been more clear in my post. It doesn't appear to me that the numbers are included for accuracy but rather as you mentioned to highlight the magnitude of the crisis. A qualitative rather than a quantitative or informational approach. There's no denying the facts and hammering that home is a strategy. As mentioned by BBB there is a precedent or fashion in sports reporting. LA will always be referred to as the American cyclist stripped of 7 TDF titles. I also should have been more clear in that these articles don't include a daily total; they round up or down. 211K not 217163. I believe the strategy is unprecedented because the crisis is unprecedented. An event hasn't occurred in my lifetime that dominates 80% of front page coverage. Must every article on that front page, 6 months into the Pandemic, provide the same context?


https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/healt...day/index.html

The uptick in Covid-19 patients comes as the US approaches winter with a daily Covid-19 base line that experts say is far too high. For the first time since August, the nation is averaging more than 44,000 new Covid-19 cases daily, according to data from Johns Hopkins University -- an average that won't help as the country enters what health officials say will be a challenging season. More cases will mean more community spread, more hospitalizations and ultimately, more deaths, Dr. Anthony Fauci has said.

At least half of US states, scattered across the Midwest and Northeast, are reporting more new cases than the previous week, according to Johns Hopkins. Only two states -- Alabama and Hawaii -- report a decline of cases.

More than 211,000 Americans have lost their lives to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins. And another 150,000 could die in the next three months, according to projections from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

[vertical_doug]

^Thanks for the reply. I should have been more clear in my post. It doesn't appear to me that the numbers are included for accuracy but rather as you mentioned to highlight the magnitude of the crisis. A qualitative rather than a quantitative or informational approach. There's no denying the facts and hammering that home is a strategy. As mentioned by BBB there is a precedent or fashion in sports reporting. LA will always be referred to as the American cyclist stripped of 7 TDF titles. I also should have been more clear in that these articles don't include a daily total; they round up or down. 211K not 217163. I believe the strategy is unprecedented because the crisis is unprecedented. An event hasn't occurred in my lifetime that dominates 80% of front page coverage. Must every article on that front page, 6 months into the Pandemic, provide the same context?


https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/healt...day/index.html

The uptick in Covid-19 patients comes as the US approaches winter with a daily Covid-19 base line that experts say is far too high. For the first time since August, the nation is averaging more than 44,000 new Covid-19 cases daily, according to data from Johns Hopkins University -- an average that won't help as the country enters what health officials say will be a challenging season. More cases will mean more community spread, more hospitalizations and ultimately, more deaths, Dr. Anthony Fauci has said.


More than 211,000 Americans have lost their lives to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins. And another 150,000 could die in the next three months, according to projections from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

I guess you are too young to remember the Vietnam War and how Walter Conkite reported daily number of dead and wounded, or Watergate just to name two.
FWIW, currently, the number of dead from Covid19= number of killed, wounded and missing in Vietnam war.

[beeatnik]

The CBS Evening News was broadcast once every weekday evening. There are currently 17 coronavirus related articles on the "front page" of the nytimes.com, about 60% of the total.

[vertical_doug]

The CBS Evening News was broadcast once every weekday evening. There are currently 17 coronavirus related articles on the "front page" of the nytimes.com, about 60% of the total.

Seems like a good front page to me.

[beeatnik]

One non-virus related story on the front page of the print edition?

[gregl]

One non-virus related story on the front page of the print edition?

So what's your point? The COVID-19 pandemic is a world-wide story, affecting every human on the planet. It affects our most basic human function: life (or lack thereof). Why wouldn't it dominate the news?

Greg

[Clean39T]

Mike Pence proved that you can indeed polish a turd to a high gloss.

And that flies are as attracted to polished turds as they are unpolished.