Take a close look at this image from what is normally one of my favourite newpapers, The Guardian. The article is about a supermarket having almost sold out of tinned tomatoes; the image shows a shelf with only a few cans remaining. However they forgot to crop the image. To the left, you can see a huge stock of tins of 'Tesco Chopped Italian Tomatoes'.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/08/coronavirus-stockpiling-supermarkets-toilet-paper-hand-gelI'm sure that once coronavirus started to escalate, a few people started panic-buying certain items, probably including tinned food. But newpapers and other media outlets are always desperate to get the latest exclusive, throwing out emotive and misleading headlines like anything. Surely it's the case that the panic buying escalated hugely
precisely because of feverish reports of panic-buying.
Press freedom is important, but with that comes responsibility. Newpapers, TV news, etc. are right now abdicating that responsibility. They mislead people all the time, but when there is a serious situation such as now, with a global pandemic, their manipulation of the public is outright criminal. Look at what happened with that quarantine in northern Italy, leaked before it could take effect, leading to people fleeing the area in advance of the lockdown, and no doubt spreading the virus and costing lives as a result.
They are not reporting news, it's just the usual sensationalist crap, but right now it is creating panic and causing suffering and death. These people should be prosecuted.
I've never been a fan of the media. They overuse figurative language in their reporting that end up to misinformation.
Let's take the Coronavirus pandemic as an example. The media focus on the negative side of the situation: death tolls, negative effects of the virus to our health, economy being paralyzed by this problem, etc. But we seldom see reports about the following: people who recovered from the COVID-19, the development of cure for this virus, the right things to do on sanitary and cleanliness, the so-called "community immunity", and other positive things.
Talking about community immunity, the media could have been an effective instrument of disseminating this. If only people were educated about the community immunity, the situation on markets and stores of basic necessities could have been better than what it is now.