Patrik, Ráchel and Matúš were looking for articles on Slovakia's biggest newspaper's website. Here are their reports...
The first article was from the 31st of July 2012 with title: "Ebola v Ugande už má 14 obetí, prezident varuje aj pred podávaním rúk" – what means - "Ebola in Uganda has already killed 14 people, the president warns about shaking hands".
They wrote about Ebola, which is a Virus highly contagious disease that appeared 3 weeks ago and it hadn’t got any antidote. But they didn’t want to scare people, so they calm us with a sentence which was said in a news DPA - "There is no reason for concern, because Uganda has the capacity to manage the spread of disease. ". They also mentioned the history of Ebola. Then few month later in november 2012 they nearly copied they last report, because Ebola has appeared again in Uganda and killed 3 people. After these reports topic "Ebola" had disappeared for few months. However in March 2014 they wrote about 88 victims in New Guinea. They ensured us that Ebola could not disseminate to another country. We were in secure. Then every day new reports about Ebola were published on newspapers. The number of victims was bigger and bigger. They were trying to calm us down with interviews of famous doctors -"Ebola can not reach Europe and the disease is controlled." said one of them.
On the 7th of July was the first report of infected American living in Ghana, who died the day after. They also mentioned that more than 800 infected people in Africa had died. After these days we could read some short news about Ebola every day. They were describing how is the disease growing. On the 1st of August was written the first report by WHO. This time the report could scare us - "Ebola is bigger, than we thought.”, but they also said, that they are working hard on solution and they have many plans. They invested million dollars to the project against Ebola. Other reports were really interesting, they wrote about how politics could affect diseases too.
This internet newspaper utilized topic Ebola in really interesting way and cogent. They were writing about everything so we could be in the scene and know the relevant facts about Ebola. They didn’t want to scare us. They have just stated the situations. I enjoy reading these reports and I learned some new facts. 
My personal opinion about Ebola in news is critic, of course it is horrible disease but in all news is Ebola pictured differently. My point of wiew is much more different. Of course there are some facts we can not change and facts that are supported by many world known scientists like it causes an acute, serious illness which is often fatal if untreated and it firstly appeared in 1976. It appeared in Nzara, Sudan, Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. I personally think that media use these illnesses like ebola to allure as many readers as they can. Just look at different newspapers, everywhere is Ebola pictured like horrible disease but nothing else matches there.
Matúš's article...
I
was focused at one of the most popular online newspapers sme.sk which also publishes daily newspaper. The first article about Ebola was published on 17. 5. 1995 in article - What
is Ebola. This
article described Ebola very well in details. It is amazing that
since this one they haven’t published article which explains Ebola
that great. I was curious what was the reason in that time because
Ebola wasn’t so known and expanded. I found out that in 1995 was
filmed movie „Outbreak"
with Dustin Hoffman where an unknown virus with some of the
characteristics of Ebola scares viewers around the world.
Most of the
new articles about this virus were focused on the numbers.. numbers
of victims, deaths,etc.. They have also often mentioned progress of
the virus in Africa and necessity of countermeasures to stop
extension
. For example in this brief chart. I really like this chart.. - "What
will Ebola do with us?" which describes in detail the action of the virus on a body and at the
bottom we can see a small but very useful and interesting chronology
sequence of the Ebola extension. In many articles has been mentioned
that European help is needed. I personally really like that I found
articles where they wanted to make us thinking in the other way. They
wanted to make us imagining that we live in their situation. They
were trying to calm us with many precautions which airlines have done
to stop extension to the world for example with infrared cameras at
the airports. Very frustrating is that they have declared in some
articles through doctors that Ebola can not get to the Europe but in
other ones they have mentioned first potential victims of this virus
in the Europe, which were later confirmed. I think this raises the
worrying situation and make us think - Who we can trust? Which
information is truthful? There were also many articles where is Ebola
associated with other issues. In these two reports (first report, second report) we can read about chocolate price increase
because of the virus threat in Ivory Coast and about rejection of
football players in championships. I have read about antibody "a
miracle cure" but always mentioned vague, fuzzy terms like
"pair of American scientists" and so. It was really amazing
to watch often different opinions of readers in discussions or in
their blog which they can lead trough portal sme.sk. The most
intimidating reports which I have found is the article with title: "Ebola wins and they can’t stop it". In
this article also came first mention about Ebola in our country. This
article acts really terrifying.
I think that sme.sk describes Ebola mostly in neutral way.
They did not want to scare readers that much that I expected. Maybe
the diversity and variety helped. Articles were written by many redactors
and they have used different sources.
No comments:
Post a Comment