You have to Crawl before you can Talk

In recent days, the news crawl on the 24 hour cable networks have begun to include multiple avian flu alerts. Quarantines in Iraq. Dead Swans in Germany. Avian Flu spreading in Nigeria. More Deaths in Indonesia.

Not a lot of detail, but useful in it’s way.

By continually scrolling these stories, people are getting used to the idea that there really is a story here. Every once in awhile, the news stations actually run a 3 minute story, complete with pictures of birds being culled by moon-suited health workers. Slowly, almost excruciatingly so, the media has started ramping up the coverage, and the threat is beginning to sink into the collective consciousness.

It’s a start. But until Larry King or Bill O’Reilly devote massive airtime to avian flu, we still have a long way to go. We need prime time specials on the major networks. Public service announcements (and not at 3am) on all channels. We need to spend at least as much time covering this as we expend on celebrity news. Brad Pitt, Anjolina Jolie, and Jennifer Aniston are important, but maybe not quite as important as a killer pandemic.

The wire services, like AP and Reuters, have begun to cover this story, although newspapers tend to bury these articles, instead of running them on page 1.

Recent headlines include:


Bird flu ‘could take 142m lives’ (CNN.com)

US mobilizes global effort against bird flu

Bird flu pandemic would spark global downturn: report

Bird flu could kill 214,000 Australians

Two suspected bird flu patients die in Indonesia

Europe stands guard against bird flu


Alarming headlines. 142 Million deaths possible (considered a low estimate by some), economic implications, global mobilization efforts.

And yet, somehow, none of this is on the average American’s radar screen.

Hopefully, that will change. Hopefully the avian flu will wait, allowing the clueless time to play catch up. But right now, I’m not hopeful.