After COVID, audiences demand less panic, more practical information from Ebola coverage
Audiences reject both scary stories and stories that dismiss their concerns
After working on the front lines of public health for 20-plus years, through several waves of Ebola crises and COVID-19, Alfayo Wamburi knows a thing or two about how people understand infectious disease outbreaks.
And after all that time, he says he’s noticed journalists still tend to make the same mistakes.
“Over and over we have used fear techniques to drive our communication,” said Wamburi, a Ph.D. behavioral specialist working for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs based in Kenya. “And it doesn’t work.”
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem