FluPortal.org

The H1N1 special, “Anatomy of a Pandemic,” is scheduled to air tonight on public television stations nationwide. For a video preview of the documentary, a co-production of WETA and PBS NewsHour, check out our blog post from last week.

We reached out to the production team to discus the challenges of covering an evolving story like H1N1. We asked Larry Klein, the producer, director and writer of the documentary, if the focus of the production had to be adjusted to respond the shifts in the H1N1 story. Klein says, “The main focus of the program – is the country prepared to take on a major flu outbreak – remained pretty much our guiding principle throughout. What we didn’t know was when the flu would actually strike the areas we had prepped for filming, and more importantly, how virulent the disease would be for most people.” Klein adds, “This one has so far remained fairly consistent although there are spot outbreaks – like the one in the Ukraine – that may point to a changing (for the worse) virus. There is also the fact that pandemics like this one often come in waves. Although it looks like things may be slowing down right now, the outbreak could pick up steam for another round in the late winter or even the spring. But we knew that at some point we had an airdate to meet and that we would need to report on the status of the pandemic before we knew all the answers.”

Betty Ann Bowser is Health Correspondent for the NewsHour and will be hosting the Insider Forum, an online component of the production. Viewers go the the NewsHour’s Insider Forum website and submit questions to two leading health experts. Tuesday evening, one day after the broadcast, the Forum will go live online and the experts will answer the submitted questions.  Bowser says, “The Insider Forums are a way for our audience to get information we may have missed in our online or TV coverage. And the experts have more time to give context and depth in their answers.”

Asked if there are any under-reported angles in the H1N1 story, Bowser points to the public understanding about who should receive a vaccination. “Some people think they are immune after being sick. And some experts say they are. But most of the experts I’ve talked to insist even if you’ve been ill you should still be vaccinated.”

Bowser urges caution in journalists covering the apparent lessening of the pandemic. We need to keep reminding the public that this thing is not over and a new wave could be coming. Klein adds, “As one of our experts said: ‘If anyone tells you they know what will happen with this pandemic, don’t believe them.’”

Check your local listings to find the broadcast time of “Anatomy of a Pandemic” on your public television station.

photo: WETA/Courtesy Production Group Inc.

On December 14th, public television stations will be airing Anatomy of a Pandemic, a co-production of PBS NewsHour and WETA, Washington D.C. The hour-long documentary, hosted by the NewsHour’s Ray Suarez, will explore the science, politics, and social impact of the H1N1 pandemic. The program will assess the severity of the threat posed by H1N1 and evaluate our nation’s readiness for widespread health crises.

Online, the Anatomy of a Pandemic website offers flu science resources, H1N1 news updates, and videos of extended interviews with health experts. Leading up to the broadcast, the public can go the NewsHour’s Insider Forum website and pose H1N1 related questions for two leading public policy experts. The forum will be taking questions from now until noon on December 15, 2009. Answers to the public’s questions will be posted later on the evening of the 15th.

Anatomy of a Pandemic is scheduled to air December 14th on PBS stations nationwide – check local listings for times. Here’s a video preview of the special:

Harvard’s Nieman Foundation — which offers a fellowship program to mid-career journalists — launched a terrific Guide to Covering Pandemic Flu earlier this autumn. Reporters, producers, editors, and news directors: this site, written “by journalists, for journalists,” is for you.

Stefanie Friedhoff, the guide’s editor, describes it as a “one-stop resource to help reporters, editors and newsroom managers get up to speed in reporting on pandemic influenza.” Why did Nieman think this was important?

History shows that the flu story presents major hurdles for those who cover it—from dealing with common misconceptions about influenza to newsroom tendencies to either hype or ignore the story to the challenges of providing context and clarity on a subject rife with uncertainty, change and confusion.

At the same time, journalists play a crucial role in keeping people informed during an outbreak.

The site provides advice from seasoned flu reporters (whose ranks are thinning) to help those learning the beat on-the-go with H1N1.

The advice and other resources are broken down into topics in the left-hand sidebar. You’ll find everything from science explainers to ideas for local angles on pandemic flu to tips on keeping your newsroom flu free.

Check it out. If you’re chronically busy and on deadline, there’s no need to read it all at once — it’s easy to scan it for one or two choice pages at a time.

Friedhoff notes that if you’d like to contribute an article to the guide, or if you have other suggestions, you can contact her at stefanie_friedhoff[at]harvard[dot]edu.

ECHO Minnesota, a Twin Cities based nonprofit organization that ensures people with limited English proficiency receive life-saving health and safety information, has created video, audio, print and other resources on H1N1 in multiple languages. The material is available free of charge to all public media outlets.

The PSAs and other resources are available in Amharic, Arabic, English, Hmong, Karen, Khmer (Cambodian), Laotian, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese.

In addition to the PSAs, ECHO Minnesota has made available a comprehensive 20-minute video program in seven languages. The video provides information about symptoms, vaccines, risk factors, care suggestions and common misperceptions.

The audio, video and written material, produced in partnership with Twin Cities Public Television and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), is available in website and broadcast versions. The ECHO Minnesota H1N1 page is here, and it includes tips on how to “localize” the resources for your particular audience.

Additional information is available from Executive Director Lillian McDonald at 651.789.4342 and McDonald@echominnesota.org.

American Public Media’s Public Insight Network is leading a pubmedia charge into collaborative journalism. It taps into the wisdom of 70,000+ volunteer sources by letting them share expertise and news tips. We invited Joellen Easton, a public insight analyst for APM, to explain the Network’s usefulness for H1N1 coverage.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

A story like H1N1 can be tricky for journalists. Sound the alarm too loudly and panic sets in. Give the issue too little attention and people don’t take the threat as seriously as they should. Even health officials are struggling with how much information is too much information. For newsrooms, that balance comes from accuracy, context, explanatory reporting, and smart sourcing. We need to know what’s happening in the schools, the workplace, and at home. We need to hear what people are experiencing and how they’re coping. And to make sure our coverage reflects the reality on the ground, we can engage our audience editorially: it’s community engagement for your station with newsroom impact.

At American Public Media and other public media newsrooms that use Public Insight Journalism, journalists are gathering insight into H1N1 community impact from listeners and readers, and incorporating new ideas and new sources suggested by the audience into reporting.

MPR News asked its Public Insight Network and listeners:

• A general query: What questions do you have about H1N1? The questions people shared with the MPR newsroom influenced the content of an H1N1 FAQ page.
• To workers: What do you know about flu-related absenteeism and other workplace concerns? A hardware store owner provided insight into the world and worries of small business in this Web commentary.
• To health care pros: Will you get a flu shot? MPR News had sources in hand for a story about health care workers planning on skipping the flu shot.
• To pharmacists: How are you coping with demand? A pharmacist shared how he is making his own Tamiflu at his pharmacy to meet demand, and MPR’s Lorna Benson broke the story.

Public insight has become a part of how the newsroom chases and tells the H1N1 story, and how it prospects for new story leads. We always ask targeted questions, but leave the door open for news tips and related leads.

One of APM’s partners, the St. Louis Beacon, asked its readers “How are you getting ready for a major flu outbreak?”, collected responses, and then reported a fresh angle on the swine flu story. Other partner newsrooms at Colorado Public Radio, SCPR, and NHPR are also collecting insight and creating H1N1 source lists.

Public Insight Journalism’s particular method of partnering with the audience involves a database of 77,000 volunteer sources, on-air and online promos, email, web questionnaires, and social media outreach, as well as dedicated journalists who comb through responses, distill insights, identify sources, and work with reporters and editors to use that insight in coverage. You can learn more about PIJ here.

Meantime, you can create a mini version of PIJ using free online survey tools. I like Google Forms because it doesn’t scream “marketing,” you can customize it, and it integrates smoothly into Google Docs for exporting responses, maintaining source lists, etc. Every form you create will have a unique link, which you can email, post on your Web site, tweet, post to your station’s Facebook fan page, and call out to on the air. (You can find tutorials for Google Docs and Google Forms online.)

However you editorially engage your community, the important thing is to listen to what people are telling you, and use their insights to guide your reporting. If you do, your stories should be richer, deeper, and more relevant.

Joellen Easton is a public insight analyst in American Public Media’s Public Insight Journalism division, where she adds mojo to Marketplace’s reporting by engaging the Public Insight Network. She also works with news directors and public insight analysts at eight public media partner organizations around the county to help them integrate public insight into their reporting.

David Baron [Shifting Ground]

As we’ve noted before, pandemics are by nature a worldwide issue. But once they hit home, it’s no small challenge to track what’s happening in the rest of the world in ways that won’t confuse or distance an already-saturated audience.

David Baron is Health & Science Editor for PRI’s The World. He says that when H1N1 first emerged last spring, the need for a global perspective was clear: people wanted to know how and where the virus might spread, and how bad it would be. Now that the virus is widespread in the United States, attention has turned to domestic issues such as school closings, vaccine availability, and government preparedness at all levels.

The H1N1 pandemic remains a very important story for The World, which covers global events and how they affect the U.S. The question they face now is: “How do we keep it a World story?” David and his team are constantly seeking global angles that connect with the needs and interests of their American listeners.

Those of us who assume the inherent importance of global coverage might be surprised to learn of its complexities. Take this report by Gerry Hadden that aired a few weeks ago.

“H1N1 Flu Shot Ambivalence in Europe” by Gerry Hadden (transcript)

[audio:http://www.fluportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/TheWorld-FluShotAmbivalenceInEurope.mp3]

David explains:

We saw a news item in which many Germans said that if they were offered a vaccine for H1N1, they would not get it. We wanted to know why Germans are so opposed, while Americans are so in favor. I assumed the story Gerry would get is that the average German is not that aware of how important the vaccine is, or that they don’t trust the German government. I assumed that doctors would be on board, but that wasn’t exactly the case. Even the German medical establishment was wary of the vaccine and was discouraging people from getting it unless they were in a high-risk group. The message from German doctors was much more negative than the message from doctors in the U.S.

I struggled with how to put this on the air in a way that wouldn’t confuse people and wouldn’t undermine the public health message here. But at the same time, I don’t want to censor anybody. If this is what German doctors are saying, of course we should let them say it on our program.

Ultimately, David chose to start the segment with an interview with an official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to remind American listeners of the U.S. government’s message, before “confusing” them with the contrasting view from Germany. He then followed Gerry Hadden’s piece with an interview with a British social scientist about different cultural attitudes to the H1N1 vaccine.

“Cultural Attitudes About Swine Flu Vaccine” by Marco Werman (transcript)

[audio:http://www.fluportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/TheWorld-CulturalAttitudesAboutSwineFluVaccine.mp3]

As David surveys the globe for more swine flu stories, he wants to avoid simply assembling “a collection of facts,” of just telling listeners what’s happening in different countries. Rather, he’s going for the “why.”

Why does one country react in one way, and another country react in a totally different way? That, in some ways, is the most interesting story.

And that’s what led to this World report last week about panic in the Ukraine stoked by a mixture of politics, media, and culture.

“Ukraine Takes Drastic Measures Against Swine Flu” by Brigid McCarthy (transcript)

[audio:http://www.fluportal.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/TheWorld-UkraineTakesDrasticMeasuresAgainstSwineFlu.mp3]

We asked David for his advice to local public media stations when it comes to covering swine flu worldwide.

Honestly, what’s happening in the rest of the world is not what the majority of Americans care about most. But they will care if and when the virus mutates and becomes more dangerous or more lethal, or if it develops resistance to existing drugs or the vaccine.

Newsrooms across the United States should be keeping an eye overseas, tracking the progress of H1N1 and other viruses, in order to anticipate coverage needs at home. And, with so many waiting in the wings, David says, “We’ll all have to get used to covering these stories again and again.”

Note: The World has several podcasts to help you track their coverage. Much of their swine flu coverage makes it into The World Science Podcast.

In September and early October, WKMS ran its own H1N1 public service announcements on-air. There were nine different ones — based on information from CDC and Flu.gov — and they were read out live in a rotating fashion. Here’s an example of one of them. It was created from information on this Flu.gov Q&A page.

Here’s a tip about flu awareness. People infected with seasonal and novel H1N1 flu shed virus and may be able to infect others from 1 day before getting sick to 5 to 7 days after. This can be longer in some people, especially children and people with weakened immune systems and in people infected with the new H1N1 virus.

Station manager Kate Lochte explained to me why WKMS created the PSAs — and why it stopped broadcasting them. Over the summer, she said, she was “invited to attend meetings with local public-health officials” to learn more about H1N1. The officials “didn’t want to talk on the record about vaccines or what to do if the workforce was decimated, etc.” They were concerned that “because the situation was so fluid, you could say one thing one day, and the next minute it’s wrong.” Not being able to report on local planning concerned Lochte, who kept hearing people in town dismissing the threat of H1N1, saying things like “oh, this isn’t anything.” She felt WKMS’s audience needed solid information about it. So the station made its own PSAs.

Lochte explained that WKMS stopped broadcasting the PSAs for several reasons. It needed the air time for fundraising, it had created its online swine-flu page, which provided access to the same information, and NPR had started “putting out wonderful reports on things we’d been trying to get on-the-record.” NPR, she said, “filled in the gap of understanding for us.”

Lochte feels that to create effective PSAs, you should assess what information your specific audience really needs. If she were making PSAs for WKMS right now, for example, she’d provide information about access to vaccines rather than the general awareness messages the station broadcast earlier in the fall. “There’s a lot of useful stuff out there,” she said, “that radio writers could hammer into people.”

If you’re interested in broadcasting some audio PSAs but don’t have the resources to create your own, you can also check out those offered by CDC (some in Spanish) as well as those provided by some governors and members of Congress.

If you’re also looking for a wide variety of PSA videos you could embed on your website, click here. If your TV station has created PSAs you’d be willing to share in broadcast quality and/or embeddable video, please let us know in the comments of this post or via our contact form.

WFCR’s Focus Western New England will be airing an hour-long H1N1 call-in special tomorrow at 4:00 pm ET. Producer Jill Kaufman spoke with me about the challenges of putting together a regional swine-flu program.

WFCR, Kaufman pointed out, is in the somewhat unusual position of serving an area (western New England) made up of several states: parts of MA, CT, VT, NH, and even NY. She explained that for a story like H1N1, this complicates things. Why? Because each state has a distinct local public-health infrastructure.

She gave me a specific example. Massachusetts, she said, “has roughly 350 municipalities, and almost each one has its own little public-health department. These departments deal with the state, and the state deals with CDC.” In Connecticut, in contrast, “the smaller towns are in health districts, so in dealing with the state, they’re doing it as a coalition.”

That variation means that many aspects of the story — like the distribution of vaccine — may unfold very differently in communities that are physically close together. It also means that WFCR reporters and producers count extra legwork to stay on top of swine-flu developments in five separate states. Kaufman did note, though, that because state and local public-health officials get their “marching orders from DC,” there are lots of similarities, too.

Kaufman says the show will explore some aspects of the state differences — like whether it even makes sense to draw state and town boundaries for a pandemic disease — but will focus more broadly on ethical questions: Are public-health campaigns stirring up too much or not enough fear? Does the federal government effectively have new controls over state policy because of the national emergency? How should schools and religious institutions and employers handle the outbreak?

This morning, Kaufman found out that her main studio guest, a public-health nurse, cannot be on the show tomorrow — because her three kids all came down with flu. The medical director at the nurse’s health center (currently healthy) is going to fill in for her. Kaufman suggested, half-kidding, that pubmedia stations consider asking guests — and producers! — to stay home and hook in by phone during a pandemic.

You’ll be able to listen to WFCR’s swine-flu special here, live. It will be hosted by Tina Antolini. Fred Bever is the executive producer. The audio will be archived here after the show.

Public radio program directors and news directors: Would you like to broadcast some extra swine-flu stories? The Public Radio Exchange (PRX), which heads the FluPortal project, is here to help. You can search for pieces by keyword, audition any that intrigue you, and license as many as you’d like with a few clicks of your mouse. (To listen to any PRX piece, just sign up for a free account. To license a piece, you’ll need a membership.)

As a place to start: An “H1N1″ search brings up these pieces. A “swine-flu” search offers these. A “pandemic” search turns up, among other things, a short history of the 1918 “great influenza.”

Here’s one example of a swine-flu story added to PRX this month: KCUR’s health reporter Elana Gordon reported on what it takes to get college students to pay attention to H1N1-prevention messages. She learned that it “requires some creativity… and even a willingness to be… well… a little gross.” You can find her piece here.

[Lance McCord / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

As you may know, FluPortal is collecting public media coverage of the H1N1 pandemic. To help this effort, we’re using the social bookmarking service Delicious.com. You can see our full list of H1N1 bookmarks on the FluPortal Delicious page. You’ll also see the tags we are using to organize the links we find. The number of stories associated with certain tags gives a sense of how H1N1 coverage is developing. Earlier this fall, we saw many reports on how schools and universities were preparing for the return of students. Lately, there have been numerous stories about the development and distribution of the H1N1 vaccine. Here are a few from the first week of October:

• OPB | H1N1 Vaccine Arriving And There Will Be Enough, Eventually
• VPR News | ‘Small portion’ of H1N1 vaccine arrives in NH
• KPCC | Lawmakers look to persuade most vulnerable to get swine flu vaccine

You can subscribe by RSS to our bookmarks at the bottom of our Delicious page. If you’re interested in a specific sub-topic, like the H1N1 vaccine, you can select any of our tags and subscribe by RSS to those stories only.