Thomas Abraham, former editor of the South China Morning Post, has written a new book – Twenty-first Century Plague: The Story of SARS – criticizing the media’s role during the SARS crisis in 2003. In order to prevent future outbreaks, he argues, journalists need to do a better job of keeping the public informed: “‘When SARS appeared, the media was not in a position to make any sense of it. I knew nothing about it and neither did my fellow journalists. So how did we report it? When it happened, we reflected public opinion. As public opinion changed, so did the media reports,’ Abraham told the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong. A SCMP report, via AsiaMedia, is here. A review of the book is here, from the Asian Review of Books.
SARS and the media
Posted by Sophie Beach | Nov 14, 2004
