Do You Have Your Face Mask?

I'll admit, when it first came in the headlines I kept saying "spine flu," but came to realize it was swine as in pig.  Well, this swine flu has impacted people in North America and Europe and has the caught attention of the World Health Organization, Center for Disease Control, governments and citizens.  Well Monday April 27th  the CDC , the "Director-General raised the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 3 to phase 4" and the cable network channels raised their level of coverage to turbo.

While information about the swine flu, its symptoms and how to prevent it is important to cover via mass media, putting it on the same pedestal as a plague seems a little too much.   While this illness can make people sick and even cause death, it's probably not going to do as much impact locally as it may seem.  While unfortunately people have passed away from swine flu in Mexico, here in the United States at least about 36,000 people die of flu-related causes each year according to the CDC.

I feel it's important that news media explains how swine flu differs from the "normal" influenza and not just highlight the same symptoms.  With all the images of of people wearing blue face masks, just the masks alone install a sense of hysteria. 

This leads me to conclude that sensationalism by the media can lead to over hype and hence panic.  While the Swine flu could potentially could be dangerous odds are that it's not.  I almost felt as if networks were sitting on edge just waiting for new case to be confirmed so they would have a new story. I say this because major cable networks sat on this topic all day and almost seemed to run out of stories and new topics.  

Last Friday I along with some fellow classmates met Phill Brooks at the State Capitol.  Phill is the director of the Missouri School of Journalism's State Government Reporting Program.   He showed us around the Capitol as well as the proper protocol for how things work.  I think the most beneficial part of the tour was learning about the XLR's and MDN.Org.

A XLR is an outlet where one can plug in their audio jack into it and retrieve sound on the camera.  They can be found in the the House and Senate Chambers as well as in the hearing rooms. It just helps improve the quality of sound.

A great website that can help make reporting more accurate and in-depth is the website, Missouri Digital News.  MDN.org shows what House and Senate committee meetings are occurring.  The website also highlights the rosters for the Missouri House and Senate, who voted for what, different bills and just about all the activity that is
happening or has happened.

Well, as the semester winds down, I'm just working on getting things finished and ending on a good note.

- Cheers Sophia