Media Responsibility: Is a Click More Important Than Human Life?

By Rasim Belko

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Media is one of the most important segments in crisis situations if its activities are directed and coordinated with the institutions of the system.

Otherwise, media can be an equal problem as the crisis, like the one caused by coronavirus.

Thus, due to carelessness and unprofessional conduct, six hours before the official decision of the Italian authorities, the media reported that the Lombardy region would be closed due to the coronavirus epidemic. General chaos ensued, and numerous Italians from this region went to other parts of Italy.

The result of all this is the fact that Italy has become the largest European hotspot almost overnight, with a large number of infected and deceased. Today, the entire country is in quarantine, but the situation is not calming down.

Therefore, one thoughtless news report by the Italian media led to a twice as large crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic has engulfed the planet; life has slowed down or even stopped in many segments.

And that might have once been breaking news, but today, when we have over 170,000 infected people worldwide, news about new infections are neither breaking news nor should they be treated as "shocking," "dramatic," etc.

Every news report written this way will only contribute to greater panic and increase the risk.

Is a click more important than human life?

In the past few days, another headline in the style of those "dramatic" ones circulated on social networks in BiH and the region. It read approximately, "While the media are burying us with news about the corona, 40,000 American special forces are landing in Europe.".

Those who cannot verify such headlines will think that the apocalypse is being prepared. In reality, it is the most ordinary exercise of the US Army, NATO, and European countries. And the number of American soldiers is half as large. NATO even announced on its website that some exercises would be postponed due to health concerns.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, we have three interesting phenomena in the reporting so far.

There are several mass media outlets that use "Breaking news" when reporting on new infections. Whether out of a desire to enhance the impression or with some other motive, I don't know, but I repeat, what is so spectacular and new about it anymore, when we know that there are already about 20 patients in BiH...

The second case is the sorting of patients by location. In the reporting so far, news about infected individuals in Republika Srpska has mostly been published under the headline "New case of infection in Bosnia and Herzegovina" or "New infected in Bosnia and Herzegovina," and similar.

Few are those who put the city or place where the new patient is infected in the headline.

The reason for this treatment of information has its background. Fear makes eyes big, so clickbait hunters know that every citizen of BiH will open the news about a new patient in BiH to see if the virus has reached their area. And so it goes, again and again.

To this should be added various speculations taken from unverified sources from around the world. Fake news is spreading like the corona itself in BiH, where the number of infected is not critical, and such news can be more devastating than the virus itself.

The third case is the publication of a confidential document from the Crisis Headquarters of the Federation of BiH, which has not yet become official. That information, published on Sunday afternoon, caused a race for shopping carts in shopping malls by the end of the evening. If this practice continues, we will soon have injured people in the fight for products.

It is evident that the greedy owners of certain media outlets do not care about the health of their readers, so they use the crisis situation for their own benefit. Therefore, it is impossible not to ask the question whether the media have lost consciousness of their social role, especially in situations like this with COVID-19.

There have been numerous appeals to the media community to inform accurately and objectively, so as not to cause panic. One such appeal comes today from the Union of Doctors of Medicine and Dentistry, which states: "We appeal to all media, as well as individuals, to disseminate only verified information, because otherwise, they cause the unstoppable spread of panic among citizens.".

However, it seems that appeals are having less and less effect, and the BiH media community, with a few exceptions, is heading towards a potential reaction from the system and the introduction of censorship on media content.

If sensationalist reporting continues in the fight for readership, we will endanger the little space we have left. But we will not be able to blame anyone for that but those among us. Because, while doctors and other competent authorities are investing maximum effort in preserving public health, individuals are poisoning the minds of an already frightened population with their "information.".

It is time for media workers to show responsibility and, with absolute professionalism, shut the mouths of those who see us as pests of society.

Therefore, we should publicly point out those within our own, media courtyard, who have replaced professionalism with greed.

Otherwise, we will all suffer the consequences because of the weeds in our ranks.