THE FOURTH ESTATE: Coronavirus, the media and a question of credibility

There are things in this world that cannot be directly perceived with the senses. Things like climate change, radiation — and especially pandemics. As German sociologist Niklas Luhmann pointed out long ago, such things can only be understood through communication. And when it comes to the new COVID-19 coronavirus, we also depend on media outlets for information. Unless we know someone who has been personally affected by the pandemic, it’s impossible for us to fully experience what is actually happening.

We count on media outlets to tell us just how life as we know it has changed, that millions of people have lost their jobs, that millions have become infected and that hundreds of thousands have died. We remain isolated at home, looking at images of empty streets and masked citizens. Regular trips to the supermarket provide our only sensory experience of the situation.

That’s why news outlets have once again become so relevant, and not just because they provide up-to-the-minute facts and figures, and tell us what restrictions politicians have determined are necessary for our safety. No, it’s about much more than that. What we learn from their reporting and glean from discussions with friends and neighbours determines how we confront the pandemic. Are we fearful? Panicked? Unconcerned? Are we depressed, or confident the situation will improve? To paraphrase Rene Descartes, one could say: “I read news about the coronavirus, therefore I am.” It’s not a surprise that media consumption has seen a dramatic increase of late. News outlets are recording record numbers of online readers, and television has even been experiencing a renaissance. But how can we be sure we are not being fed misinformation? Social media sites are awash in fake news, with millions of stories about how garlic can protect you against infection and other nonsense. Such sites have once again proven themselves to be incubators for misinformation, and in this case, fake news that can put human lives at risk.

Facebook and other platforms are working harder than ever to limit the spread of misinformation, but they simply cannot employ enough fact-checkers to stem the tide. The gravity of the current situation has led many to turn to traditional media outlets for their information. A recent study by Reuters polled people in Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the US and found that they gave greater credibility to news outlets, far more than social media sites.

At the same time, those with lower levels of education tend to rely far less on trusted outlets for their information, preferring to get theirs via social media.

But the task has been made more difficult by the fact that we must now sift through a glut of information with the help of fewer employees, most of whom are not in newsrooms but working by themselves from home. And with the crisis cutting into advertising budgets, many media outlets are facing very grave financial challenges. They’ve also been haemorrhaging cash because they are obliged to offer coronavirus-related articles and videos for free, taking them out from behind a paywall. We are living in a paradoxical situation in which information being offered by independent media outlets in democratic societies has become more important than ever, even as those organisations are fighting for their financial survival.

The writer is a journalist with Deutsche Welle