Risk in the eyes of the public

In crisis situation, in my opinion, we have to start with the basics: understanding what actually is happening. This is the most important part in a crisis for both the journalists and the public, so that we can handle better what's still ahead of us.

Very often journalists seem to jump into two quite big mistake: (1) they try to "make up" the story in order to make it more interesting and/or shocking; (2) they are often not asking many of the involved ones, and rely on too few sources of information. The results of these two mistakes are incorrect information, one-sided information, misunderstandings, which, at the end of the day, creates confusion and uncertainty and upsets people.

Simple example: along with the elections in Kenya in December 2007, street fights started, due to a lots of background reasons such as poor leadership, tribal conflicts, political mismanagement and dissatisfaction of living conditions, amongst others. Western journalists, of course, had troubles with finding out the real background of the problem, and I read dozens of articles which showed a total misunderstanding of the situation. There were even stories published telling that Kenyan workers were rebelling because they were simply too lazy to work... During this time, I was staying in Nairobi, and of course, I got a lots of worried calls, that I should immediately go back to Hungary, because my life would be in danger (it was not).

So obviously the risk was not covered well, and Western media did not deal well with uncertainty and conflicting information.

This is just one story of many, to keep it simple, but very often I see the same pattern: covering pandemic situations should start with understanding the situation as a wh*** (different perspectives, uncertainty), and the risks that it entails - if this is well done, it makes it easier to build up trust and avoid or decrease panic.