Death Figures Have Lost All Context: Brutal Imagery Must Drive Narratives
By: Ryan Thyfault
Tags: Covid 19, Pandemic, Death, Media Criticism, Reality

Photo Credit: KOCO’s Abigail Ogle

This photo is an absolutely brutal and visceral testament to the carnage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I admire the courage of she who shared it with the world in the name of awareness and realism. Our news outlets relate stories about hospitals at capacity and thousands of Americans dying every day, but the broader media ecosystem is so concerned with churning out loaded headlines for clicks that they never take the time to humanize the information and put a face to the statistics.

As a result of this depersonalization, many travel in direct opposition to holiday guidelines, fail to quarantine when necessary, or gather maskless indoors in large groups without considering the potential ramifications of their actions.

With the mainstream media abdicating its responsibility to communicate the negative fallout resulting from deviant behaviors, their empty words dilute the warnings of those battle in vain and attempt to convey the seriousness of following health protocols, but who lack the cultural persistence of our entertainment news outlets. Disinformation and anti-intellectualism play roles with regards to fostering, shaping, and guiding this behavior, no doubt, but our American media conglomerates are also failing in their duties due to a persistent inability to engage in critical self-reflection, coupled with their groveling to the cult of the almighty click. Rather than yet another vapid story relating how “[Some Person] BLASTS [Other Person] for [Action or Thing]!!!”, it is imperative that our ostensibly-trusted media outlets display the visceral damage the virus has wrought, the havoc it is wreaking, and the long-term damage it will continue to do as hospital systems nationwide reach and/or exceed their critical capacity; anything less is a fundamental abdication of its role as the Fourth Estate in American society.

Culturally, Americans are afraid of death and shun it — it is for precisely this reason, then, that we should be subjected to images and stories like this every day to make us feel uncomfortable, to exploit this cultural taboo. We are more divided than ever as a country and as a society now in life, but there is no unifier greater than the inevitability of our demise. We should pivot away from discussions of statistics and arguments over executive orders and speak instead in the visceral language and imagery of loss and death.

Photo Credit: BBC’s Brian Lee Hitchens

The media must tell us these stories and show us these pictures, broadcasting them far and wide: I implore that they not interview another male on oxygen at some backwater hospital who was a COVID denier but now warns people it is real for the 900th time. This approach doesn’t work, sadly, as the legions of obstinate deniers don’t care because he is still alive to confess his sins.

Instead, news programs should show the volunteer healthcare worker who is gasping her last agonal breaths, leaving behind family and friends because her hospital was overwhelmed and she lacked proper PPE. The media should broadcast the 50-something year old marathon runner dying in an ER entryway because the hospital didn’t have room for him two days prior and sent him home, only for his daughter to drive him there again after it was too late. The media must televise brutal reality — statistics are easy to gloss over if you don’t contextualize them or parse them out, and emphasizing the lasting side effects cannot overcome the politicization of the virus.

A reframing of the narrative through the lens of the great unifier might give those who so cavalierly tout the low mortality rate of the virus (but are scared to the bone by death) pause before they do something selfish and/or stupid. It might make them further question the intentions and actions of people like Kristi Noem or Mitch McConnell when they refuse sensible fiscal aid packages or the codification of safety measures to keep the capitalist machine running. It might be the only thing that can handhold many of these Americans to the realization that Trump has been gaslighting them about this and untold other things for years. It might further bring about their realization we are all humans sharing a common reality, as bleak and dark as it is right now.

In what may prove a great irony, the only way to unite the country towards a common purpose in life might be by embracing death. The media must show us these images and videos and share these stories, exposing us to death rather than insulating us from it.