What is the relationship between moral panics and the media? Cite two key examples.
This is an essay I wrote for university in the unit, Media Law and Ethics.
Introduction
Bonn (2015) defined moral panic as, “a situation in which public fears … greatly exceed the objective threat posed to society by a particular individual or group who is/are claimed to be responsible for creating the threat.” Bonn states that Stanley Cohen (1972) first developed the theory of moral panic and in his work outlined five specific elements of a moral panic. Firstly, there must be concern for a threat to society, secondly, hostility to the threat. Cohen stated that the threat or embodiment of the threat would turn into a, ‘folk devil,’ which would be used as a scapegoat for the resultant moral outrage. Thirdly, there must be consensus in society as to the seriousness of the threat; fourthly, the reaction to the threat must be disproportionate and fifthly, it must be volatile, as articulated by Cohen, “the panic erupts and dissipates suddenly and without warning.”
The object of this essay is to assess the relationship between the media and moral panics. The two case studies I will concentrate on are the Ebola Crises in West Africa in 2013–15 and the Bill Henson photography controversy in 2008. These two examples have the advantage of being relatively short-lived moral panics.
Ebola Crises
The Ebola Crises was an outbreak of the Ebola Virus, which began in March 2014 (N.A, 2016). The focal points of the epidemic were three countries in West Africa: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Medicines Sans Frontiers (2016), quoting World Health Organisation statistics, reported that 99.8% of all reported cases and deaths occurred in these three countries. The remaining 0.2% of cases were people in the three countries who had travelled to other neighbouring African countries with the virus, while others were aid workers from Europe and the United States who unwittingly brought the virus with them to their home countries.
The western world would be an ideal place for the media’s coverage to create a moral panic as the epidemic is not in countries like Australia, so our perception of the virus will be influenced by its representation in the news. Media attention of the outbreak in the western world was sporadic, until October 2014, when the first case of Ebola was discovered in Texas, USA. The victim was Thomas Duncan, who was exhibiting Ebola symptoms only after he had arrived from Liberia (Cullen, 2014). When the first case of Ebola was reported in New York, the story was awarded the front page for the next day (New York Post front page, 2014). While in Australia no one had contracted the virus, when a person in Queensland was examined for Ebola, it too was considered front page news (Courier Mail front page, 2014). Already, we can observe that media coverage is taking on elements of Cohen’s moral panic. The first element is apparent; there is significant concern of Ebola as a threat. The third element, consensus exists as we can see from the newspaper front pages, Ebola is now considered the most important news in places as diverse as New York and Brisbane. And to an extent Cohen’s forth element of a disproportionate reaction also exists, especially with regard to the Courier Mail example, bearing in mind that at that stage, no one had been confirmed to have caught the virus in Australia, the person who was the subject of the story was cleared of the virus and there has never been any subsequent case of Ebola in the country; it seems one of the first casualties of a moral panic is accurate reporting.
The second element of Cohen’s moral panic is the creation of a folk devil that will be the subject of society’s outrage and prejudice. In the American media’s coverage of the crises, it appeared fear of the virus was being transformed into prejudice against people from Africa. For instance, Fox News claimed that people arriving from Africa would not seek proper medical care but assistance from, ‘witch doctors,’ as justification for a travel ban (N/A, 2014a). Furthermore, criticism of the government’s response also developed racial connotations when Keith Ablow on Fox News suggested that Obama was indifferent to Ebola moving from Africa to America because he was, ‘their,’ leader (N/A, 2014b). This is what Clark (2014) called the, “narrative of the leper,” whom people will fear and throw scorn at.
Eventually, as per Cohen’s analysis, the panic subsided. No Ebola case ever occurred in Australia, while in the US, the last case was reported on 15th November 2014 (Ashkenas et al., 2015). In addition, in January 2016, the WHO declared the outbreak over in West Africa as there had been 42 days passed without a new case reported. Google trends (Google trends web search, 2016) also show that interest in the topic, manifested through Google searches also dramatically declined almost as soon as it had provoked the world’s interest as the threat to the western world diminished and the virus is brought under control at its source.
Bill Henson Photographs (2008)
Bill Henson is an Australian artist who specialises in photography. In 2008, Henson was displaying one of his exhibits at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney. This particular exhibition featured darkened photos of naked, pre-puebescent children. The invitation for the event, containing such a picture was seen by a Miranda Devine and writing for the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) decried the sexualisation of children in the modern-day world, “Such images presenting children in sexual contexts are so commonplace these days they seem almost to have lost the capacity to shock” (2008). David Marr (2011) in his book, Panic, relates the story of how this became a moral panic. Devine’s story was picked up by 2GB radio station and presented it with a golden tabloid opportunity, “the best beat-ups work only if there is some issue in the mix that really matters. There was here: children and their protection” (p. 29). Marr writes that soon, newspapers were contacting politicians, TV crews were outside the gallery and by evening, police from the Child Protection and Sex Crime Squad had arrived who confiscated some of the photos for further examination and the exhibition was suspended. We can observe that Cohen’s moral panic is taking form; firstly, the photographs are seen to be a threat to the protection of children, Marr noted that the controversy had dovetailed from the Orkopoulos child abuse case which had exposed pedophilia at the heights of the NSW government (p. 124). There was significant hostility directed against the source of the threat, the exhibition and against Henson, beginning with the SMH, 2GB and the next day after the police raids on the gallery, the Daily Telegraph awarded the story the front page with the following headline, “CHILD PORN “ART” RAID,” and the byline read, “Victory for decency as police close gallery” (Marr, 2011 p.140). The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, also appeared on Channel Nine’s Today show to condemn the images (p. 141). That the exhibition was now being covered by print, radio and TV reveals that the requisite consensus had also been achieved. Cohen’s fourth point, a disproportionate reaction to the threat can be seen by the events that followed. Marr reports that the Classification Board, which sets guidelines and classifications for all published material declared the images to be worth of a
PG rating only, while the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) informed the police that the images reviewed were not illegal and the exhibition was re-opened (p.143). After this anti-climax, Henson’s work drifted into obscurity. In May 2010, Henson exhibited the photos in Melbourne and barely gained a mention in the local newspapers (Marr, 2011 p.149) and Google Trends (Google Trends web search, 2016a) also shows how quickly Henson had shot to infamy and how the sober analysis of the Classification Board and DPP put an end to the frenzy.
Conclusion
What the two examples examined above show us then, is that moral panics and media enjoy a symbiotic relationship. The examples show us that panics are born in the crucible of the media’s mandate as purveyor of information that is in the public interest, such as health warnings with regard to Ebola, and as articulators of society’s moral values with emphasis on exposing wrongdoing in our midst. But what we can see is that those goals are sometimes hijacked by other journalistic priorities, such as always getting the, ‘scoop,’ or constantly searching for another angle for an endlessly flogged story and on occasion inciting fear and anger for its own sake, in the name, most likely, of maintaining their audience. The media sources that have been mentioned in this essay as contributors to moral panics can be categorised as the tabloid press and there is much to be said about their role in society as Marr sums up their ethos thusly, “the purpose of the tabloid press is to maintain a perpetual state of false alarm” (2011, p.8).
