Quarantine for Ebola Lifted in Liberia Slum
Source from: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/world/africa/quarantine-for-ebola-lifted-in-liberia-slum.html?ref=world
Date: 08/31/2014
The article Quarantine for Ebola Lifted in Liberia Slum illustrates the situation of Ebola in Liberia. The government of the country announced that there would not be an Ebola quarantine on a large slum in the capital any more. Earlier, the president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf rejected the advice of international Ebola experts and her own health officials who suggest that a large-scale quarantined by the military would not be easily handled; and the disease would spread even faster than before. Also, the quarantine would not be comprehensive because the military system was corrupted; the soldiers earned bribes from the residents to help them sneak out of West Point. The action made the people to suspect her ability of dealing with the outbreak. However, the life of quarantine made the residents released.
In the article, the author uses the word “slum” to describe the community in the capital. It will lead the readers the limited information and bias that even in the capital city, the neighborhoods are slums. It promotes the unfair impression of how Liberia is really like. The usage of this word will mislead the readers to imagine Liberia as a chaos.with hunger,famine and starvation. Also, the author describes the president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as an arrogant and ignorant person. Using the phrases like “reject international Ebola experts”,”her own health officials”, “unmanageable and could exacerbate the spread of the disease”, and “pay the bribes”, the author tries to misguide people to understand the African countries, like Liberia, that have the problem of incompetent leadership, rampant diseases, flagrant corruption problems. The impression I got from the article is absolutely stereotypical and biased.
I found this article on The New York Times, which is considered as one of the very reliable sources for research. I do believe that sources impact the tones/words a lot. Newspapers, one of the mass communication that help people to get information, have their own purpose. In many countries, newspaper publishers are governments owned. They have to write what satisfied the governments, otherwise they will be big trouble. Most of the governments would like the newspaper, or the other media mediums to disparage the rest of countries so they can look better. For example, in the China national TV news program, the first thirty minutes, the hosts will report all the good news that show the residents how prosperous the country is, and in the rest of 30 minutes, the audience will find out how miserable and chaotic the rest of world are. This is the trick of the media. They blind people’s eyes, and tell them no truth. New York Times, as a well-known USA publisher, further or less, will try their best to make USA look better than others, especially when USA tries to be “the policeman” of the globe. There must be bias happened.
Personally, I think that none of us are Liberians. We do not know what is going on there, and we do not know what is the president’s plan. The newspaper should report the news in a certain way that is neutral, and fair. The author should not judge the country by the stereotypes. I am sure that no one wants their community to be called as slum, and each coin has two sides.