The Coronavirus Story is Unfathomably Large. We Must Get the Reporting Right

Posted Monday, March 23, 2020 3:17 am

Lenore Taylor | The Guardian

The news rolls in like waves. One unfathomably huge development crashing on another. President Donald Trump has shut US borders. Now Australia is closed to foreigners too. Scott Morrison is spending billions. The surplus is history, a recession now inevitable. The graph of confirmed cases soars. The death count climbs. The job losses rise. We were allowed to attend the football, then only smaller gatherings, now we have to measure the space between us and other human beings, soon there may be localised lock downs. Daily life is shutting down, closing in, to makeshift home offices and socially distant outings to supermarkets where there’s not much to buy. And that’s just in the last week.

I’m thinking carefully about how Guardian Australia reports on the biggest event of our lives. How do we track these daily convulsions and make sense of how society is shattering and how or when it will recover. Reporting the coronavirus pandemic is a defining challenge and responsibility for the news media. It demands deep consideration

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The Coronavirus Story is Unfathomably Large. We Must Get the Reporting Right

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