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Journalists and public health experts agree that media coverage of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic has been counterproductive in recent months.

The H1N1 pandemic has dominated news headlines since cases of the disease appeared in Canada last spring. The coverage drastically increased in the weeks leading up to a University of British Columbia conference held earlier this month entitled Health and Environment Reporting in a Connected World, where H1N1 became the primary topic of conversation amongst journalists, public health experts and scientists.

One cause for concern was the volume of H1N1 stories published this fall. Alan Cassels, a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria, said this drives fear and panic. “I’d like to see a lot less of it,” he said.

Patricia Daly, chief medical health officer at Vancouver Coastal Health, was more concerned about the type of stories the media latched onto. “In this case the controversy is all that they’re searching for,” she said.

Roy Wadia, director of communications for the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, disagreed. He thinks the media have done a good job with the stories and the problem is the mixed messaging coming out of public health agencies.

“I think public health has failed miserably in talking about the pandemic in a focused way,” said Wadia.

News media are not the only ones talking about H1N1. The public used news websites to start commenting wars about vaccinations.

Cassels presented results from what he calls a “ quick and dirty study” where he looked at the types of comments found on the Canadian news website, CBCnews.ca. He found that vaccine skeptics were highly vocal and a commenting war broke out between the skeptics and people defending vaccinations.

Anne-Marie Nicol, assistant professor at the UBC School for Environmental Health thinks the anti-vaccine group may be more vocal because those views aren’t well represented in the media. “These people don’t get legitimized and these comments are one of the few places where they can become legitimate players,” she said.

Having studied epidemics throughout history, Dr. Nicol knows people have always questioned vaccines and says they have some good reasons to. In 1976 there was an immunization campaign to vaccinate everyone in the United States for swine flu but the vaccine was linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

“A lot of this is an artifact of history and not acknowledging that might be what’s fueling people to be upset about that,” she said.

Ira Basen, with CBC Radio, doesn’t think this is the case. He agrees that most of the news coverage is pro-vaccine but doesn’t think that is what makes people go online to voice their opinions.

“I think people who hold those types of positions will gravitate online because they can find a community,” he said. “You can be a vaccine skeptic and not be considered a nut-bar because you’re with other people who agree with you.”