Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Monday, October 13, 2014

This Illustration Of Ebola Coverage Shows How Problematic Media Reports Can Be

The first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in the U.S. died Wednesday. Three days earlier, government health officials in Sierra Leone reported 121 Ebola deaths in a single day. But Western media made little mention of the latter.

A new illustration from frequent Vanity Fair contributor André Carrilho puts that into perspective.

Until American doctors treating patients with Ebola in West Africa were diagnosed with the disease, the current Ebola outbreak has been largely faceless, mainly about statistics and if and when the virus would spread to American soil.

Carrilho told The Huffington Post he created the illustration to show how the media "seems to treat epidemics differently, depending on where they occur, and to whom."

"I think unfortunately, in the Western media, there are first-world diseases and third-world diseases, and the attention devoted to the latter depends on the threat they pose to us, not on a universal measure of human suffering," he said. "A death in Africa, or Asia for that matter, should be as tragic as a death in Europe or the USA, and it doesn’t seem to be."

Since the first cases of the current Ebola outbreak were reported in March, 3,865 people have died of the disease in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The mortality rate for the disease averages around 50 percent, the World Health Organization notes, and there are currently no licensed Ebola vaccines.

Two American aid workers who survived the disease were given the experimental drug ZMapp for treatment. It is unknown if the drug helped in their recovery process, but the decision to administer the drug to the two victims was seen as controversial because African victims of the disease were not given the same opportunity for treatment.

Carrilho says this difference in treatment and media coverage shifts the paradigm.

"If an epidemic breaks out in the USA or Europe, suddenly the reporting is more engaged. This gives rise to a few side effects," he said. "The 'us versus them' relationship shifts from detachment to fear of incoming immigrants from affected countries, and in both race and nationalism have an active part."

If Carrilho could see one change in the way the outbreak and public health are discussed, he says, it would be to tack on more global perspective.

"I would like to hear from the people who are affected everywhere," he told HuffPost. "I would like to feel that everyone’s voices are more equally heard, even if they speak a language that is not mine."

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Emily Thomas

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