How Proven Journalism Strategies Can Impact Global Health
Anika M. Buch, ‘24, Princeton University
During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, science advanced at a rapid pace. From the development of the first COVID-19 tests to advancing these tests, publishing statistics on the R-naught of the disease along with false positive and false negative rates of the test to developing the first mRNA vaccine - science rose to the challenge. In doing so, however, one of its largest blind spots was exposed.
For all it was discovering, for as fast as it was moving, science could not be effectively conveyed to the general public who most needed to hear it. And so while vaccines were developed, the layperson questioned: “What’s mRNA anyway?” More urgently, ill-contextualized conversations about false positive and false negative rates bred skepticism among the general public - creating hesitancy, to say the least, to abide by public health guidelines. For an example, one need look no further than the ever changing mask guidance from the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic. The change from being told that the public did not need to wear masks at all to being told that masks were required left many incredibly skeptical of public health guidance - early in the pandemic. This only worsened as the pandemic did.
Science remained very compartmentalized when it most needed to branch out. As a result, people lacked the guidance they needed - leading to confusion and skepticism. In part, the general gratefulness for public health figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci came from their ability to effectively translate the science into actionable guidance. But these figures were burdened with a responsibility which should not have been theirs to bear entirely.
Enter journalism. Where scientific journal articles remained inaccessible to the layperson, the newspaper rose to the challenge and compensated - explaining what had to be done in terms which were 1) comprehensible 2) accessible and 3) actionable. Pieces in The New York Times or CNN were much more effective in communicating the gravity of the pandemic than an R-naught value in a scientific paper. Even at present, as conversations about booster shots exacerbate confusion, journalism seeks to clarify and inform in a way which is actionable for the general public - espousing community health and safety.
These journalistic outlets used their live and published platforms to communicate a ground level reality to a public to whom the numbers arising from the system were largely inaccessible - the analyses even more so. Watching doctors explain how their realities had absolutely transformed - watching this public health crisis break medical professionals and break our health system wide open - journalism did what public health couldn’t. By rising to this challenge, journalism also showed us exactly what was wrong with public health and the larger issue of its inability to convey the urgency of evidence based approaches to the general public.
To start, the context which is so intrinsic to every piece of journalism is inherently missing from the numbers and statistics which public health professionals use to inform their approaches. It is precisely for this reason that news and features pieces published on the pandemic itself were uniquely positioned to render topics such as mask-wearing and vaccination apolitical where public health professionals - giving their press conferences from the White House - could not. And no matter how much scientists attempted to assure the general public that the measures were strictly apolitical, the incumbent administration at the time ensured these assurances were drowned out.
This is only compounded by the fact that public health lacks the ability to communicate to the general public. Such a gap in communication not only exacerbated confusion surrounding guidelines, but it bred skepticism of expert guidance which was only further amplified by the politicization of what should have been apolitical policies. Journalism, on the other hand, rose to the challenge as medical journalists frequently appeared on television and wrote guest contributions to counter misinformation and attempt to restore public trust. President Biden’s own COVID-19 Task Force, once appointed, repeatedly made television appearances in order to bridge this gap as well.
In other words, public health needs to communicate with the general public and expand its reach such that discovery translates to action. This means less jargon, less compartmentalization, and increasing a symbiotic relationship between researchers and the community they serve. One cannot exist without the other, and to pretend they can is to do both a great disservice.
This isn’t a one sided problem either - few problems are. For every scientific paper that could be more accessible, there must exist a population willing to read it, willing to educate themselves on what’s not working well and be invested enough in the communal health and safety of a community to fix it. This requires a cultural shift toward data, toward fact, and most importantly, toward a deep concern and understanding of the context behind this data.
The solution here is twofold: Science needs to make its discoveries and be able to explain them. Simply put, what’s the point of discovering a vaccine if no one understands enough about it to take it? What’s the point of creating a COVID-19 test if no one knows enough about it to take it? And likewise, the general public needs to take an interest in the science which has the ability to drastically improve their lived reality.
As the pandemic fades and we begin to pick up the pieces, let us pause to examine the cracks in the system before hastily putting things back together.
References
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