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Theres a potentially deadly disease afoot in America, with no known cure and terrifying consequences for those infected.

Ebola? Well, yes, but another bug has had far more wide-ranging consequences. Since an outbreak began in late summer, the enterovirus has sent thousands of people, primarily children, to hospitals in 43 states and the District. One strain, enterovirus D68, has apparently caused polio-like symptoms in some patients, leaving them unable to move their limbs. Four people who recently died tested positive for the disease, although the link between the virus and the deaths is unclear, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

You might not know all that from the news medias reporting over the past few weeks. The enterovirus certainly hasnt been ignored, but its a mere footnote compared with the oceanic volumes devoted to Ebola, a disease that has devastated parts of West Africa but has only one confirmed case diagnosed in the United States. CNN has been especially relentless, chasing down every conceivable Ebola angle and a few inconceivable ones, too. One segment explored the possibility of catching Ebola from a sneeze, a pet or a swimming pool (the expert answers: really rare, no evidence for that and highly unlikely, respectively).

For the most part, the reporting on medical aspects of the disease has been straightforward and responsible, with many stories emphasizing the relatively low risks of infection. A few commentaries, meanwhile, have lapsed into xenophobia about the African sources of the disease. One Fox News pundit, Andrea Tantaros, offered this analysis last week: In these countries they dont believe in traditional medical care. So someone could get off a flight and seek treatment from a witch doctor who practices Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion that includes ritual animal sacrifice.

But even when the reporting is accurate, the sheer tonage of it raises a question about proportion and relative risk: Why is Ebola a media superstar when other diseases say, enterovirus or the common flu have more far-reaching and even deadlier consequences in this country?

The question is a familiar one to people involved in spreading the word about public-health threats. News reporting, they say, typically underplays some risks and overplays others. Mundane behaviors smoking, overeating dont rate sustained media coverage yet are linked to preventable diseases that kill tens of thousands annually. Ordinary viruses, such as the flu, take a huge toll as well but dont rate screaming headlines.

If any or all of these issues received the levels of media coverage and public concern that Ebola was receiving, thousands of annual deaths could be prevented, said Jay Bernhardt, the founding director of the Center for Health Communication at the University of Texas. The volume of Ebola coverage, he said, reminds me a lot of the over-the-top coverage of serial killers or celebrity scandals in that they are far out of proportion with the risk or relevance to the general population.

Social-science research has shown that intensive news reporting on certain diseases can distort public perceptions of their severity and the chances of contracting them. In a 2008 experiment at McMaster University in Ontario that was updated last year, researchers asked undergraduates and medical students their impressions of 10 infectious diseases. Five of the diseases (anthrax, SARS, West Nile virus, Lyme disease and avian flu) had received relatively more news media coverage than a second group of five.

Result: The high-media frequency diseases were rated as more serious than the more obscure diseases by both the undergraduates and the medical students. Both groups overestimated the chances they would get one of the better-reported diseases.

But thats not to say that the media is over-covering a particular threat, said Meredith Young, the lead researcher on the studies, who now works at Montreals McGill University. It really only is in hindsight that we can say whether a potential threat was over- or undercovered in the media and what the real risk was of that particular infectious disease, she wrote in an e-mail. That is, did the threat materialize? Or did the media coverage help to prevent the threat by warning of a potential contagion and mobilizing preventive action?

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Media goes overtime on Ebola coverage, but not necessarily overboard

The NSW Supreme Court has suppressed the identity of a media figure who is the subject of an ICAC investigation. Photo: Andrew Quilty

A mystery media figure and the organisation which employs him have lost a legal battle trying to stop the Independent Commission Against Corruption from gaining access to his work emails and diary.

The identities of the media figure and the company have been suppressed by the NSW Supreme Court but the wording of a recent judgment in the matter suggests the person is a political journalist or commentator.

On June 24 the corruption watchdog issued a summons to the media organisation requesting that it produce "an electronic copy of the contents of the following email account in your possession, custody or control". Any other email account or electronic diary controlled by the journalist was also requested.

The summons also required the journalist to attend a secret hearing at the commission on July 8.

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Failure to produce documents or to answer questions can result in a two-year jail term.

The media organisation retaliated by demanding that the ICAC investigators produce documents to show them the nature of their corruption inquiry.

"We know nothing about this investigation," said Bruce McClintock, SC, for the media company when the matter came before Justice Ian Harrison in August.

Mr McClintock argued that the summons was "illogical" and "irrational" and that its scope was unreasonable. He told the court it was "inconceivable" that each and every email, regardless of subject matter, would be relevant to the commission's inquiries.

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ICAC to access emails of mystery media figure

Jewish Media Control, USA
Information from http://www.incogman.net on Jews in the US media (dated 2012). 2014 video of captioned photos (with old film effects) and more black. Revised versio...

By: rerevisionist

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Jewish Media Control, USA - Video

AURORA, Ill.

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration and lawmakers toured a sabotaged Chicago-area air traffic facility on Friday, saying they were shocked by the extent of damage and calling for a more sophisticated backup system in the event of future trouble.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta and members of Illinois' congressional delegation spoke to reporters after observing the damage and the recovery efforts at the facility in Aurora. Authorities say a contract employee armed with knives cut through cables and used gasoline to set fire to a basement telecommunications room on Sept. 26, destroying equipment that forced the shutdown of Chicago's two airports and led to the cancellation of thousands of flights.

"It was an incredible act of sabotage," U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said after the tour, which was closed to journalists. He said in one area of the telecommunications roof there was nothing left but "a charred mass of black cables."

The FAA has said it hopes to have the center's communications system operational by Oct. 13. More than 10 miles of cables need to be replaced. In the meantime, other air traffic facilities have taken over the center's responsibilities.

Responding to calls from lawmakers, the agency is carrying out a 30-day review of security procedures and "ways to more quickly restore service" in the event of future outages, Huerta said.

As an intermediate step, the security presence at critical facilities has been increased and patrols have been stepped up, he said.

Durbin, along with U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk and U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, said the FAA needs a better backup system to ensure planes can keep flying safely in the event of future trouble and more money from Congress to make sure it gets done.

"In the case of the private sector, you need continuous operations no matter what," Kirk said. "The government can sometimes go through a full cardiac arrest, like we had here."

The FAA is in the midst of transitioning from a 1950s-era radar-based system to one based on GPS. Known as NextGen, the FAA's more modern satellite-based program should enable more seamless operations. But it is years from being fully rolled out.

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FAA chief visits sabotaged Chicago-area facility

The huge protests in Hong Kong were planned long in advance, but their scale seems to have taken many by surprise: The city was in chaos over the weekend after thousands took to the streets, and there are many signs that the Occupy Central demonstrations may not be over yet.

For Chinese state media, the protests present a conundrum: how to cover a story that is now too large to ignore without challenging the official narrative. Their response, at times, seems awkward.

According to the China Media Projectat the University of Hong Kong, more than 20 mainland newspapers have run astory from China's state news agency, Xinhua, in response to the protests. That report is based largely on an official statement by theHong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council and contains little explanation for the protests, which it calls "unlawful occupation actions." A later report from Xinhua, featured on the English-language China Daily Web site, describes the disruption caused to Hong Kong daily life in neutral terms.

In op-eds, however, there's a more noticeable negative sentiment. State newspaper Global Times, known for taking a stronger, more controversial stance on issues, published oneeditorial that says people should feel"sorrow over the chaos" caused by "radical opposition forces."

That editorial has since been deleted from the paper's Chinese-language Web site but still appears online in English, perhaps an indication of its target audience. "U.S. media is linking the Occupy Central movement with the Tiananmen Incident in 1989," the editorial says. "By hyping such a groundless comparison, they attempt to mislead and stir up Hong Kong society."

In another, now-deletedop-ed published byGlobal Times,Wang Qiang,a professor at the Peoples Armed Police college, suggested that if Hong Kong's police could not control the protesters, mainland China's paramilitary group should be sent in. Events that "damage the fundamental interests of a sovereign country cannot be tolerated indefinitely," the article says, according to an archived version.

Meanwhile, the People's Daily published an op-ed Monday that expressly linked the protesters to "foreign anti-China forces" and alleged intervention by the United States and Britain. "No one is more concerned about the future and destiny of the Chinese people in Hong Kong" than the Chinese government, the op-ed states. It also accuses"some of the Western media" of creating "a big fuss," noting rolling live coverage of the protests.

That rolling coverage is certainly in marked contrast to how the story is being covered by Chinese broadcasters. The protests have been featured little, if at all, on China's largest state broadcaster, CCTV, and George Chen, a columnist at the independent South China Morning Post, points out that Shanghai's state television channel appears to be portraying the large crowds in Hong Kong as pro-state nationalists:

For mainland users looking online, the informationisn't much better, unfortunately.China's large Web portalsseem to be giving the protests little attention.

Social media is being restricted, too: The China Media Project's Weiboscope tool shows a remarkable spike in the number of posts censored on Chinese social networks, and, as my colleague William Wan notes, one of the few available Western social networks, Instagram, appeared to be blocked Monday.

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WorldViews: Chinese state media points to foreign hand in Hong Kong protests