With the corona virus pandemic going around, it's inevitable that it's all over the media getting coverage from all different types of people and therefore, different angles are being taken on the issue.
The World Health Organisation has made this article addressing the situation in which they take a more informative stance giving people advice on what to do to keep healthy in current times, they focus on telling people how to help delay the spread of the virus by giving people tips, (stuff people should do in the first place but oh well) and then explaining why said tips help.
They also have a "Myth busting" tab which goes over common things that people say about the virus, an example being:
The reason that the WHO would be taking this stance on the issue is most likely because it's their job to try to inform the general public on how to stay safe in times like these, they want to protect as many people as they can from becoming ill.
The second take on the corona virus I'll be talking about is how NBC News has covered the issue, they take on the issue from a different angle talking about a sort of bright side to all the bad that's going on, that the corona virus has had some "unintended climate benefits: cleaner air, clearer water" They talk about how the lock down has positively affected the environment in a number of different ways, for example:
The canals in Venice have been made noticeably cleaner, as there are less boats travelling through them, there are even "visible fish traversing in the water ways".
NBC News has a number of quotes from scientists saying that "Although grim, it's something scientists said could offer tough lessons for how to prepare — and ideally avoid — the most destructive impacts of climate change."
Another thing that has been improved is carbon dioxide emissions, they link a tweet from NASA saying that greenhouse gas emissions have went down considerably, especially in China, where the virus started and lock down first took place, Chinese New Year was also affected by the lock down, so the emissions that normally causes have been subsidised.
NBC News have most likely took this approach to the coverage on the corona virus is because they want to not let people to forget about the environment, which is arguably of even bigger concern than the virus in the long term, they want to send the message that we can save out planet if we just tried, we're doing it by accident already.
The stuff on NBC is really interesting - I think it's important for the news to explore lots of aspects of a single issue - and I think that because it's really the only story in the news at the moment we will see more of this. You should compare this to some of the sensationalist and scaremongering stuff in the tabloid newspapers - sometimes you would think they were representing two completely different issues!
What you've actually stumbled across is mediation in action - Selection, Organisation - and particularly Focus! Consider this whenever you see a representation of the virus and try to deconstruct the story into those three main ideas. What you will sometimes uncover is the agenda…
This idea surrounding NBC choosing to focus on the positives is interesting. I view this approach as a little distasteful on there part as from what I can take from this post it seems to take the approach that this makes up for the suffering of the thousands who have died or lost loved ones. I completely agree climate change is an issue of paramount importance yes but we as a cultute need to consider the more immediate effect of the virus rather than tying to spin it to further an agenda regardless of weather I agree with said agenda.