How the media works, chapter 48, in an occasional series of 12: Swine Flu.

How the media works, chapter 48, in an occasional series of 12: Swine Flu.

When news first came to hand back in late April of an outbreak of a quick-spreading and potentially deadly virus, the Australian media went berserk. Flu! Pigs! Mexicans! We couldn’t get enough of swine flu and the apparently imminent threat it posed. Then nothing much happened. People failed to die locally, or even get infected, and quickly the news cycle moved on. A pandemic might be brewing out there, but not quickly enough to make a claim on our collective attention span. The story pretty much drifted to the inside pages in the Australian media. Meanwhile, slowly, surely, increasingly, the virus began to make inroads in the Australian population. Yeah, well. We’ve done swine flu. Pandemic? What pandemic?

The crystal ball nature of the modern media means that outlets spend so many pages covering what may happen, what could happen and of course, what should happen, that when something like swine flu does finally start to take hold, well, we’re bored already.

So here are the Media Monitors figures — the first line shows how much coverage swine flu got when there were no cases in Australia. The second, from a week in which it was slowly spreading through our schools and cruise ships. Weird.