Nicole Jones

MIT 3773 Final Essay

Wednesday, April 3rd 2019

Jeremy Copeland

Analysis of the 2014 Ebola Crisis Through CNN and The Guardian News Organizations

While living on the opposite side of the world, it is sometimes hard to grasp information

on what is going on thousands of kilometres away. Therefore, there is something called

reporting on the margins, which in simpler terms, means reporting on developing countries

from a distance. Obviously, it is not so easy to get the information accurately being so far away,

so the average person may need to do some research to further their knowledge on the news

story. Being a Canadian, the peripheries can stretch all the way across the globe to places like

Africa, or even in the northern parts of our own country. It is up to news organizations to

decide what kind of coverage a story will get, and very often are places on the periphery are not

considered for travel, as resources and budgets can be tight. This makes sense, as in order to

consider something “newsworthy”, there are five factors to take into account. PBS.org Student

Reporting Labs claim that the five factors of newsworthiness are: “timeliness,” “proximity,”

“conflict,” “human interest,” and “relevance.” As we can see here, proximity is the second most

important factor of newsworthiness, making reporting successfully from the periphery very

difficult. Local news, of course, has a higher demand than something international, so unless

there is a crazy story overseas that impacts the local demographic, it is hard to justify investing

into said news story. After performing research, it is safe to say that African news coverage

from North America is minimal compared to other relevant stories. It is fair to question
whether or not countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Sierra Leone are

lacking news coverage in the Western world due to the significance of the region on the global

scale. Within this essay, I will being deeply analyzing news coverage of the 2014 Ebola Crisis

through CNN and The Guardian, as a prime example to determine the agenda setting for each

news organization with regards to my claim.

Before discussing the Ebola Crisis, it is important to understand the situation in Africa to

being with and how it is perceived by North America news organizations. First and foremost, an

article by Alexander Wooley suggests that American’s rely on pop-culture and Hollywood to

gain an understanding of African culture. Wooley quotes a famous marketing expert who says

“they [Americans] only picture jungle and savannah, starving people, child soldier” (Wooley,

2018). Wooley’s article is about how the fourth-most searched African country on Google in

2018 was Wakanda, a mythical place invented by Marvel for their hit film, Black Panther. In my

opinion, this is extremely problematic and just shows how uneducated the American populace

is on African culture. In fact, this is apparently due to the fact that the small amount of African

coverage in America is considered to be “negative coverage”. In fact, an article by Front Page

Africa makes a claim that so much of the news that is being given to America about Africa is

“fake news” or is just simply inaccurate, and the media just shows a stereotypical view of the

continent (2019). The article also discusses how the media is what shapes human knowledge

today, that being said, Africa is mostly known for being a high-poverty, disease-infested,

illiterate country that is full of corruption. In order for this preconceived notion to be fixed,

Africa deserves to be shown in a positive light as well – this means that there needs to be more

coverage of the region across the globe.

 Before I dove into comparing and contrasting the issues within the news coverage, I

took it upon myself to research the 2014 Ebola Crisis as a whole. To my understanding, the

Ebola virus disease originated in the DRC at the Ebola River, and is most common in apes, such

as chimpanzees (CDC, 2018). Since the mid-1970’s there have been very few human-infected

cases of the virus, however in 2013, there was an Ebola outbreak originating in Sierra Leone,

but killing thousands of people. It then spread across the world in 2014, and was declared an

epidemic until June 2016 when the virus became controlled and the epidemic was over (CDC,

2019). I took this information and decided to explore the first articles published by both CNN

and The Guardian. The first organization I looked at was The Guardian, and what they have

covered, and it is safe to say that between 2014 and 2019, they have put out hundreds of

articles. The first article I could find within their archives dates back to April 1st, 2014, and it is

called “Guinea's Ebola outbreak: what is the virus and what's being done?”. The article is a

simple, informative piece, explaining to the audience what exactly is going on and giving a brief

background to where the Ebola virus disease comes from. This article was written much before

the disease became a worldwide epidemic and the death count was at about 80 at this point

(Yuhas, 2014). I then decided to look into the CNN archives and try to debunk the first official

article regarding the Crisis. Their first backdated article I could find was from July 1st, 2014,

three months after The Guardian. Now, I am not sure if this is accurate because both news

organizations have extremely unorganized, difficult to navigate archives. This got me thinking

that maybe the United Kingdom news organizations felt more threatened by the disease as the

proximity was much closer than the United States.

 Let’s uncover one of the main issues, the way North America covers African issues as a

whole. After diving into the CNN archives, I looked through all of their coverage of the Ebola

Crisis from June 2014 all the way up until June 2015. The first thing I thought when I simply just

read through the headlines was that CNN was truly mainly focused on American’s effected by

the disease, or even people from other Westernized countries, such as Scotland. This got me

thinking to myself, did American’s only cover this epidemic because it is directly impacting their

people? Even though hundreds were dropping dead daily in Sierra Leone and Guinea? Well, this

inspired me to dig even deeper and read through different articles in chronological order.

Before October 2014, the virus was extremely under control and remained in Africa, it had not

started travelling over to other parts of the world. Once the first person in the United States fell

ill from Ebola, there became scares regarding infected flights, discussion of possible

vaccinations, and constant updates on local cases of the disease. This left the audience wanting

more and more, making them extremely invested in the case. On October 28th, 2014, both CNN

and The Guardian came out with their features about “patient zero”, the African toddler who

was the first struck victim of the virus. Finally, both news organizations were able to give a full

breakdown of the situation in Africa. They worked smartly, as at this point in time there was full

investment of the global population into the Ebola epidemic, and people were obsessed with

hearing about it, thus, putting out these types of stories fed the thirst for information.

A study conducted by the Health Communication publication discusses gatekeeping and

instilling panic on American’s using journalism (2018). Firstly, the study claims that the due to

the digitalization of journalism, the audience plays a significant role in the success of a story.

This is because of social media, sharing options, and the concept of things going “viral” is in the
hands of the audience now (Kilgo et al., 2018). Now not only do audiences rely on large-scale

news organizations, but they take to social media websites, such as Instagram, Facebook, or

Snapchat, which redirects them to more independent/alternative media sites, like Reddit.

Reddit allows the audience to create their own content by leaving opinions or even credible

news updated within the “discussion” section, making the news more accessible and

conversational. Moreover with regards to the Ebola crisis, the same study uncovers that

American news organizations get much attention during “hot crises” that directly impact their

populace, putting the country into “panic mode” (Kilgo et al., 2018). In 2014, the first death in

the United States caused by Ebola happened to a Liberian citizen, Thomas Eric Duncan. This was

then the rise for concern rose within the Western world, as the disease was now on domestic

soil. The authors claim that “the progression of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Africa, the transfer

of Ebola patients to the United States for treatment, and the death of Duncan” (Kilgo et al.,

2018), are the reasons why this epidemic instilled panic among Americans. It makes sense that

news organizations, like CNN, takes priority in covering situations that may potentially threaten

lives of the West. Maybe had the coverage been more serious before this point, the disease

might have been under more control in Africa and it may not have travelled over to the United

States – this is just a theory.

The Guardian recognized all these issues and took terms into their own hands when

putting out an article called “Let’s be honest. We ignore Congo’s atrocities because it’s in

Africa”. Now, unlike the United States and CNN, The Guardian is at least able to recognize that

there needs to be a change. To summarize, the article discusses how the genocide happening in

the DRC can compare to the Holocaust, as one of the deadliest wars of all time “yet I doubt
most people in the west are even aware of it” (Jones, 2015). As a citizen of Canada, it really

surprised me that all of this was going on in Africa in general. However, we often see

advertisements for villages and countries in need of donations, we also see organized trips for

Me to We in order to build schools and water holes for the people of Africa. Although the news

here does not give much attention to the bigger issues in Africa, we know there is always help

needed, it is just up to us North American’s to demand more news coverage. This is where the

whole “gatekeeping” comes in, as the American agenda setting is to feed the wants of their

viewers. The article from The Guardian touches on the Syrian conflict, and how we are so

invested in that because of the amount people seeking refuge in our corner of the world,

however, “up to 6 million people are believed to have perished in the DRC” (Jones, 2015). Now,

although this is not about the 2014 Ebola Crisis, this article just goes to show that we are not so

concerned about events occurring over there unless it is directly impacting the Western world.

When the outbreak fizzled out, the African corner of the world became almost irrelevant once

again on our news stations, although the African genocide continues still today.

Fast-forward to today, April 2019, Ebola has returned since the 2014 crisis. However,

due to the epidemic that occurred just five years ago, Africa is equipped with the proper

resources to handle the virus. On March 9th, 2019, CNN and The Guardian both reported that

one of the largest Ebola treatment centers in the DRC was attacked in the midst of the local,

smaller-scale outbreak. Personally I can say that until writing this analysis, I had no idea that

there were still cases of Ebola going on in the world, or that there was a civil war going on in the

DRC causing African people to attack on each other. I am a true believe that this is because the

virus has not struck North American’s directly, therefore, the stories that do exist on CNN about
it are not necessarily broadcasted the way more “newsworthy” stories would be. It is not just

the news organizations that are at fault, it is the audience, American’s who simply are not

concerned with the lives of these people. Yes, it is difficult to report on stories that are taking

place across the world, but if the story was of significance to put time and money into

reporting, than the coverage would be similar to that of the Palestine-Israeli conflict in which

American’s seem to be very invested into.

How can we fix this problem? Like I said before, it is not just the news organizations that

are at fault. Does it really have to do with how close we are to the location of the story? While

comparing both The Guardian to CNN, I realized that there may be slightly more information in

the United Kingdom compared to North America, but it is nothing to write home about. In

order to make changes here, we as people need to educate ourselves and take interesting in

world events, instead of being selfish. Digging into the archives and reading multiple studies on

the topic has made me realize that the agenda setting of these news organizations is to appeal

to their audiences and feed them what they want to know. It is most important and beneficial

for these organizations to invest their time and money into breaking news that is going to get

significant attention from the audience. We are now the gatekeepers of news, as it is up to us

to decide what is most important. We are not the only ones to blame, I also believe that if the

coverage of the DRC became a priority for stations like CNN, we would become more invested

into the stories. It is a two way street, if we are not given the information it will not get the

desired attention, and if we do not give the story desires attention, it will not succeed in a

large-scale news organization.

 All in all, I believe that we are the most fortunate people in the world to live in such a

wealthy and safe country. It is stories like these that just go to show that it is up to us to help,

we have the money and the resources to help the DRC. The same way the United States has

stepped into the Israeli-Palestine conflict is the help Africa needs to become a stable,

developing country. More effective news coverage of the genocide is needed today the same

way the Ebola crisis of 2014 was covered, and even the same way World War II was covered. It

is embarrassing that as a citizen of North America, who frequently keeps up with CNN, that I

have no idea what is really going on in the other corners of the world.
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