SARS scare

It is always interesting to see how certain issues can become so skewed in the media that they become so much more (or less) than than they actually are in real life. The group presenting on the media's interpretation of SARS did an excellent job at outlining the media's interpretation of this 'panic': national, international, and otherwise. Even their first question "which one of us do you think could possibly have SARS", and the response "the Asian guy" perfectly demonstrated the way in which this event was portrayed by the media. It was apparent during the scare, or any big scare for that matter, that the media has a tendency to feel the necessity to find someone or something to blame the situation on. In this case, the obvious scapegoat was of course, the Chinese, which was an easy one considering he virus came from Guangdong, China. Sure, this was an easy connection to make, however, the media really pushed this assumption and completely deflected any blame which could have fallen on Canada. The group did a great job at showing this deflection when they showed us (or tried to show us as it were) the pictures the media displayed of people in Asian walking around busy intersections with masks on, making the public feel as though Asian had become a dangerous, diseased place who were infecting the rest of the world.

As always, this is another example of how powerful the influence of the media is. A few cases of SARS breakout in Toronto, and all of a sudden there are high schools in small rural Ontario towns (such as my hometown of Owen Sound) who are considering canceling there planned school trips to see musicals downtown Toronto. This was indeed a created media scare which had mass effects all across the country. I find it interesting that even back then (before I had ever heard of Communication studies) I was always a little wary of the things I heard through the media. This was demonstrated when I went on an adventure in Chinatown with my family during the height of the SARS scare to buy some fresh Asian lychee fruit (or as we called them at the time, SARS berries). According to the media this was an incredibly stupid and reckless thing to have done, however we sensed that this issue was being made out to be much worse than it actually was and so did not take it as seriously as the media would have liked us to have. A similar situation could be the MSG scare. According to my research, there is nothing harmful about MSG. Some people have been known to have allergic reactions to the substance (one man had an allergic reaction to it and this got blown up in the media, hence the MSG scare), however for most people it is completely harmless and has no damaging effects. However, because of a few specific cases, most people are suspicious of MSG.

The powers of the media continue to be displayed and are especially evident in 'scares' such as this. One must always be conscious of what the media is trying to tell us an try to take an objective approach to consuming the news.