Getting through the hype is never easy. In the day of 24-hour-news and Internet, this hype is omnipresent. The swine flu has been a typical case: do we believe the over-excited newspapers handed out for free on metros and buses or the mostly reliable New York Times or the Guardian UK? How do we look behind the nature of newspapers – informing and engaging the public – to sales numbers and what flashy headlines mean for paying the bills? This op-ed carries a few suggestions:
So what is the answer for confused media consumers in an era of 24/7 television and Internet coverage? Possibly it is just this: first, people may need to abandon their hope that the many, many voices that make up the world’s media today will suddenly start singing as a chorus, and figure out which of those many voices seem to regularly deliver credible information. Then, as Dr. Goldacre advises, we may all have to accept that disease forecasting — like weather forecasting — is more of a guide to what might happen that a certain prediction of what will happen.
It’s important to remember that the media has its own distinctive agenda. While often this is partisan, it is also, particularly now with so many newspapers folding, financial. Personally, when it becomes a matter of ‘hype’ and the line between true and false becoming even more blurred, I’m left wondering where to turn to.