There is a lot of interest in COVID and how it's being handled these days.
I recently got an email from Sean who writes,
Hi Jeff,
Question of interest.
Why does media generally give different statistics before actually giving active cases? Eg today, you have...Ontario's lives lost, the total cases for the area...and only then says three active cases further down?
Are people in North Bay not most interested in the number of people that have COVID right now or is that just me? I apologize...I assume you are inundated with emails on this controversial subject. Perhaps I am in the minority but in times that people click...why is first line (or the actual title) not...."3 people in health unit currently have COVID - January 25th"
Again, sorry for the bother...simply interested in this.
Sean
He has a good question, why is that so?
Well, there are a number of factors, and it also depends on the reporter.
When I do a COVID writeup I think people are most interested in whether there has been an increase in new cases first, followed by the details of those cases like age range or how they contracted it. The total active cases come next, followed maybe by a breakdown between North Bay and Parry Sound.
Obviously, if there are no new cases, that is the headline.
Sometimes we have a story that runs across the north and includes provincial statistics. That isn't written locally, and so the local stats may appear somewhat buried, but that is rarely the case.
I also think, however, that readers are getting COVID news fatigue and so if numbers are very low we may just skip coverage that day. I find people are more interested if there is a spike in cases.
Our coverage is complicated by the fact that BayToday has a lot of readers in Timiskaming Shores and Muskoka, which both have health units different from our own. So if something newsworthy happens there and is of general interest, I might even lead with it.
There is no set format of course.
Coverage is also determined by access to information and how the individual health unit engages the public.
I find Dr. Jim Chirico at the North Bay Parry Sound Health Unit very poor at this, compared to Dr. Charles Gardner, medical officer of health for the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit.
Chirico always looks uncomfortable dealing with media and plays favourites. He won't do a live interview with BayToday and insists that questions be submitted by email in advance to his Communications department, then you usually wait hours to get some sort of reply. There is too much secrecy over there in my opinion.
In contrast, Gardner holds regular virtual news conferences and takes questions. I have found his staff will go out of its way to be helpful.
Our personal feelings should be set aside, after all, our goal is the same...to inform and protect the public.
I also get questions about transparency. Why is the gender no longer given? Why can't the cases be broken out more to give an idea where local hotspots are? Those are questions the medical officers and government will have to answer. We can only report the information given to us.
I generally support privacy, but I agree that this has been taken to extremes during this pandemic.
People also ask why certain things are closed and why North Bay is in lockdown when it has so few cases. Simple answer is I don't know, but I agree that there needs to be a compromise between people's physical and mental health.
I expect in the coming weeks our coverage will shift more to the vaccine, how much we are getting, how many arms have been jabbed, who gets it next?
Do you have a question about why and how we do things at BayToday?
Drop me a line at [email protected]
Jeff
