How Visual Journalists Seeing COVID-19 Epidemic
The effects of COVID-19 is being compared with the effects of the second world war. It doesn’t need an explanation that how severely this virus is harming the world. Visual journalists are covering this from the beginning. In the visuals, many things are coming up such as how the corona is causing distance among the family members living under one roof, how doctors are working restlessly in the hospitals full of infected patients and the risk they are in. The visuals also showing situations and conditions of hospitals, empty roads, activities of police and other law enforcement authorities, the effects of this epidemic in a wide range, how the low-income people are suffering for this, how the economy is getting affected and the measures taken to prevent the spread of corona.
During this epidemic, some yellow journalistic activities are also occurring. Some days ago in Delhi, India Tablighi Jamaat held a huge event with thousands of people. The event started on 3 March 2020. As the event took place amid the corona pandemic, many people criticized them on social media using hashtags against them. There are some allegations rising about spreading Muslim antipathy basing on this event since among the participants 300+ people were tested positive for Coronavirus. Some news media ran a communal Muslim antipathy propaganda using the event and that resulted in a communal clash. Among the SPJ code of ethics, there is one code that says not to misinterpret the story. This code has been violated here because, the way they presented the news of the Tablighi Jamat conference, mislead and spread negative and communal antipathy among the audience.On the other hand, some media published the news of the event in a positive way that helped to raise awareness about the epidemic and gave a message to avoid making gatherings during the epidemic.
A photo story published in the New York Times-
In this report on COVID-19 New York Times has shown how doctors are working in a hospital full of corona infected patients, how the volunteers taking the infected people to hospital from home, how the scenario becoming in a family when a family member gets infected, the state of a lockdown neighborhood, how the patients getting treatment, etc. The positive side of this coverage is people getting to know what is going on and what is the situation caused by this epidemic. In my opinion, this coverage does not violate any of the SPJ, NPPA code of ethics. The negative side is unintended but unavoidable. The negative side of this coverage is it may cause panic and tension among the readers regarding the Corona epidemic.
— Piyas Biswas —
Student of Diploma in Visual Journalism — The Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University.