Short Writing Assignment, "It's Spreading"

400 Words2 Pages
The essay, “It’s Spreading” first appeared in an issue of the New Yorker, a cultural magazine that focuses on New York City, in 2009. The intended audience is every day society but specifically those that hang on every word provided by the media. The author assumes that the audience is not well educated in the identification and treatment of disease, therefore vulnerable to the media’s account of every day occurrences instead of proven facts. The author writes from an omniscient point of view and is making showing the role the media played in the pandemic of Psittacosis in relation to its role in reporting the 2009 outbreak of “Swine Flu”. The paragraphs are not all the same in length but contain factual data, like dates and events, and are informative. The title is significant because it could mean that the disease itself is spreading or the news of it is spreading. It could also mean that the hype and idea of not necessarily reporting facts have become what are now called “news”. The author’s main point is that media plays a large role in how everyday people view a circumstance. It is not clearly stated in a thesis or listed in an introductory paragraph. She slowly makes the implication, paragraph by paragraph, as she shows how being carless in reporting the news can leave society, as a whole, clueless to what is actually going on around them and by the time they have the facts it may be too late. The main sub points are the fact that the papers initially reported that the medical community was puzzled by the disease, even though it was already known and being studied, which created a pandemic. Later, the media started reporting that people’s fear and anxiety was unwarranted and people started believing that he issue wasn’t real. These points are supportive of the main idea because they show cause and effect. The media’s portrayal of the disease as highly
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