As Suza Francina discussed earlier this week, considerable evidence points to the possibility of a link between a factory pig farm in the Vera Cruz area and the outbreak of the swine flu in Mexico. Tom Philpott, who writes about agriculture issues for Grist, and Tom Laskawy, who writes about public health issues for the same publication, have posted daily updates on the possible link, which looks plausible to many experts but has not proven epidemiologically.
Now two British publications, New Scientist and The Ecologist, have weighed in. Based on a close examination of the structure of the virus, which has been endemic in American factory farms since l998, New Scientist calls “the swine flu a disaster waiting to happen,” while The Ecologist criticizes the media for failing to explain how this “new” flu could appear:

It is disappointing that, so far, very little of the press coverage has focused on the role of factory farming in the genesis of this virus. Animals kept in industrial conditions, crowded into small pens next to each other, fed unnatural diets, and kept ‘healthy’ with a regime of veterinary drugs, will have greatly weakened immune systems and will effectively act as living Petri dishes in which this virus and others may combine and recombine to become unique strains that, in theory, can also be uniquely virulent.

The irony is that in our local media, there has been some good coverage of the possible cause of this flu outbreak….on the editorial page.

On Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by Wendy Orent, a journalist specializing in epidemics. In 800 words she explained what thousands of column inches in the news section did not; why the flu has been most virulent in Mexico, how factory farms created reservoirs of pathogens, and why there is no need to panic.
To quote:

So why are some of the Mexico strains so lethal? The answer may lie in the virus’ possible origin: a giant Veracruz pig farm that raises almost a million pigs a year. According to Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN, an environmental organization, reports have been coming in for months of the appalling conditions in the Perote Valley where the farm is located. Locals report a fearful stench, hosts of flies and, since December 2008, serious respiratory disease that sickened 60% of the community. One of those cases, a 5-year-old boy who has since recovered, had the H1N1 swine flu virus. Other samples have disappeared, Kuyek says, and most people were never tested.
Influenzas that have their origins in huge, crowded animal farms are often more virulent than other flu strains. Germs that kill their hosts quickly tend not to thrive; their hosts die before there is time to pass the virus on. But on crowded farms, the next snout is an inch away, and even virulent strains can gain a foothold. It is the same type of conditions that produced deadly avian influenza in giant poultry farms in Asia over the last 10 years.

Because news coverage is expected to report facts, visible or quotable facts if at all possible, and because viruses by their nature are a moving target that cannot be seen, the American mass media has largely failed to even discuss the origins of this flu, why it is not likely to be a great threat in this country, and, of course, the possible link to factory farming. The result is that fear has spread far more widely than knowledge, which points to a weakness in our style of reporting.
In short, unless a casual link to a disaster — be it a hurricane, an invasion, or an outbreak — can be explicitly shown, it cannot be reported, or even discussed, except on the opinion pages.
The result is a news media that can only report on effects, not causes. which makes for a media of dubious value in a real crisis.
(h/t: A Change in the Wind)