Journalism
Last night, right before going to bed, I had a freakout moment about the hantavirus 🦠I was reading the news (never read the news before bed, okok...) and had such a strong déjà vu moment. Will it be another COVID_19? Honestly, I got scared, and my fear was compounded by the fact that now, my wife and I have a kid.
But then I moved from the Italian newspaper I was reading to an English one, and then to a Dutch one. I just thought, let me check... The same topic was treated in a completely different way. The recount of events was more factual, the titles were less emphatic, less alarmist, and the details chosen as important were less scary. The news was not even on top of the website.
I felt a little reassured, honestly. Not because the risk of a pandemic is not there, but because I could read factual information about it.
Then, after yet another failed attempt at soothing our baby, I couldn't sleep. And I started thinking of how important it is to have access to good journalism, the type of reporting that is based on facts and not on clicks, that presents what happened without, at best, dressing it up in exaggerated terms just to scare people and force them to read more of that topic, and more, and more, until they are exhausted and end up hating the media.
It's a battle up there, where the news is born, and we common mortals can only hope that good journalism wins, and tomorrow’s newspaper will leave us better prepared for what lies ahead, rather than simply more afraid of it.
And I am so sleep-deprived...