Having Squandered Its Integrity The Media Now Want You To Believe Coronavirus Lethality

Like dominos, high-profile sports and cultural events are falling to the spectre of the coronavirus threat. The 2020 Women’s World Hockey Championships in Halifax bit the dust this past weekend. This week’s  Indian Wells ATP/WTA tennis has been cancelled over the perceived coronavirus threat. The LPGA cancelled an entire three-event swing through Asia. Chicago University cancelled a West Coast trip by its basketball teams. Formula One has cancelled its China F1 stop.

And there is increasing anxiety that Japan might cancel this summer’s 2020 Olympic Games should the spread of the virus not be checked in time. This is all in the name of caution, as the virus spreads. Fair enough.

The prospect of games being played before empty stands is already a reality in Italy and other harder-hit countries. (NBA star LeBron James added his two cents, saying he’d refuse to play before empty stands, because he does it all for the fans. What good would it be to entertain no one, asked King James.)

So, are sports organizations over-reacting? At one extreme, something called the American Hospital Association guesses that, over the next two months, COVID-19 might kill half a million Americans. According to the Center For Disease Control, there are just 164 total cases in the U.S. at the moment from a population of 350 million. “The best estimates now of the overall mortality rate for COVID-19 is somewhere between 0.1% and 1%," Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at HHS, said Sunday. "That's lower than you heard probably in many reports ... it's not likely in the range of 2 to 3 percent.” 

Fewer than 20 people in America have died so far from the virus. Leaving the public mystified over whom to believe and how serious the virus is..

Everyone seems to agree that, as currently understood, the COVID-19 strain is quite dangerous to the elderly and those with underlying conditions. Healthy adults who self-quarantine will experience the virus with few side effects.  Curiously it does not seem to target the very young. Many have actually worked through the virus’ lifespan in their bodies without knowing it.

SARS and Ebola it ain’t. Using good hygiene and avoiding public places if you’re at risk would seem to make widespread cancellations unnecessary. But politicians and sports officials, wary of a negative media broadside,  are taking no chances about infection. If they have to hobble the economy then so be it.

Many are also wondering where were  these stringent standards now being employed for COVID-19 back in the winter of 2017-18 when flu season killed over 80,000 Americans and many Canadians as well.? No major sports events were cancelled that winter. The media was not in a froth over washing hands. Costco was not besieged by those seeking all the toilet paper they sold.

What has changed? Principally it’s the tenor of the media coverage which has ranged from cautious to incoherent as certain elements of the fourth estate try to portray Covid-19 as a rebuke for globalization or a sign that their whipping boys— Donald Trump, Doug Ford— have bungled the rollout of the disease. 

Calling it a “deadly” coronavirus or describing the “pandemic” sweeping the world is in fashion. “Stricken ships” sail the oceans like ghost vessels. Any attempt to mitigate the risk is met with scorn and condescension. If you are scared that’s because the media juggernaut wants you to be. 

One sidebar story to prevention attempts has been the NHL’s decision to bar reporters from dressing rooms for their usual interview access to players. Till further notice, interviews will be conducted in press rooms with a limited number of players and coaches made available. (It’s expected other leagues will follow.)

This has led to a hot debate about the value of reporters haunting the sweaty salons of sport to collect quotes and develop trusting relationships with athletes. In my experience, dressing-room access is essential to a certain genre of game-day reporting. It was never a kind of reporting that interested me. (Especially when the subjects were naked half the time.) I found that hotels, airports, restaurants and agents to be better places to find my kind of stories. 

But I understand it’s the backbone of beat reporting practiced since the dawn of recorded (sports) time. The question now is, having barred reporters for COVID-19 reasons, will leagues let reporters ever get back in? Personally I doubt it. 

If the worst predictions do come true on COVID-19 dressing-room access might be the least of the problems from this encounter with a new virus. And if it passes like most flu seasons, don’t expect the fainting goats of the press to ever accept responsibility for whipping up the population into hand-sanitizer paralysis.

But we will have crossed a new Rubicon in how such stories are covered. Bigger is better. And badder is best.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of  Not The Public Broadcaster. He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also a best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports And Why The Free Market Could Save Them is now available on brucedowbigginbooks.ca.