Page - 207 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

207The Media Paradox and the COVID-19 Pandemic It might be argued that the media missed anticipating one of the important, tragic elements of the COVID-19 pandemic: the outbreaks of the disease that struck with often fatal consequences in nursing and long-term care facilities. Perhaps a more alert media would have understood early on that such facilities, with so many frail patients and staff in close proximity, would become “hot spots” for the dis- ease. But that kind of prescience would have taken sustained commit- ment to cover health care in all of its dimensions, something the media does not do well, dwindling resources and ephemeral attention spans, among other reasons. The media often plays catch-up; that is, when something suddenly pops up on the public radar screen, as with the pandemic’s appearance in nursing homes and long-term care institu- tions, the media reported the outbreaks, the reaction of loved ones, and the reaction of governments. And when cries went up to take pri- vate institutions into public ownership, the media reported the cries, but then ignored a discussion of what such a move would entail— billions of dollars expropriating private property and the bottom-line costs of running the institutions. This debate, now launched by the New Democratic Party and the Canadian Labour Congress, will likely go on for some time, with evidence from some shoddy for-profit insti- tutions being raised as justification for more public ownership. Skepticism is part of the media’s obligation to hold public authorities to account. It does this, among other methods, by asking if better ways exist to achieve objectives or questioning whether the objectives themselves are valid. In the case of COVID-19, the objec- tives seemed almost universally agreed upon: the maximization of the public health of the population and the eventual re-opening of the economy. The means to achieve those objectives will continue to be debated, as they should be, in the media. And various options will be given full coverage, including the ones that might, in the opinion of frequently quoted experts, increase chances of a second wave of the virus developing in the fall. The primary objective of keeping people safe raised various questions that the media asked but did not pursue; notably whether those in authority had missed or minimized signals coming from overseas about the seriousness of COVID-19. Similarly, in the after- math of SARS, had Canada prepared itself adequately for another pandemic? The answer is evidently no. But the media, by and large, did not belabour this lack of preparation, because SARS was by many orders of magnitude less menacing than COVID-19 and the viruses