Journalists and telling the coronavirus story

MELBORNE, Australia: From an ethical perspective, covering the coronavirus story is really hard to do well. The reason for this lies in an inherent conflict between two ethical obligations: the obligation to truth-telling and the obligation not to add unjustifiably to public anxiety.

From the earliest days, when the virus spread rapidly in China and began to cause deaths, a degree of anxiety enveloped the world. This swiftly accelerated into panic as it became clear that, in an age of global connectedness, no country was going to be immune.