Laura Seay speaks about the sensational BusinessWeek cover with its racist undertones. It's not the first time BusinessWeek has published that kind of cover.

Last year for a cover article on the supposed housing "rebound" and the new/old challenges it was bringing, their cover sparked a small appropriate firestorm of indignation and protest (at least in the racial equity and civil rights press) about its overt racist characterizations. Here's a piece I wrote about it on our blog:

http://www.rooflines.org/3126/businessweek_cover_points_to_us_all/

As bad as the cover was (the article itself was actually quite good and not at all racist), the fact that people could produce it without seeing what it was speaks to issues in American society that go far beyond the possible prejudices of a handful of designers. It really does speak to the structural and implicit racism that all Americans have absorbed from lifetimes of exposure to the subtle (and often not so subtle) corrosive attitudes towards people of color.

I doubt that we can purge ourselves of these malignant ideas and beliefs, but we can and should certainly be aware of them. Without doing too much navel gazing, we should at least try to challenge our assumptions and beliefs when we write about, or illustrate magazine covers featuring, people who are unlike us.

As I listened to this report last week, I was appalled by Ms. Seay's casual dismissal of what has been highly known to be a far more contagious and deadlier virus than HIV, with missives about the incorrectness of the "deep dark Africa" stereotype.

In her zeal to dismiss what she believed to be misinformation, she stacked more dangerous misinformation onto the heap. She should be held accountable to make a formal apology and retraction of her ill-conceived views. Her incorrectness on the this matter will become more and more apparent in the coming weeks.

Now that an NBC cameraman has contracted the virus, perhaps professor Seay has some insight on when/if it can become airborne - after all, he is a cameraman and not a doctor, taking all kinds of precautions.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/nbc-news-freelancer-africa-diagnosed-ebola-n217271

Would love to ask Ms. Seay if this is a problem:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/02/dallas-ebola-patient-vomited-outside-apartment-on-way-to-hospital/

PS Heroic coverage: Mark Doyle BBC - refuses to mince words. 'Only a military scale response will control this epidemic.'

I've never heard OTM get the story so wrong as in this case. For an example of 'getting it right', look no further than ATC's 9/18 story explaining exponential growth. A perfect 'explainer' of a volatile story.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/18/349341606/why-the-math-of-the-ebola-epidemic-is-so-scary
I have the greatest respect and admiration for the editorial judgement of OTM, but this is an example of misplaced 'gotcha' journalism on a story of paramount global importance, and cherry picking an 'expert' for the sole purpose of supporting the host's misplaced premise. Air a correction, then focus OTM's critical eye on the vast overemphasis on vaccine stories and the vast underemphasis on the global community's failures to deal effectively with a crises that has been well anticipated for 20 years. One example: at the tipping point of the epidemic, the Ban Ki-moon is appearing on the Daily Show instead of trying to salvage some remnant of a response by the UN.

I think you will live to regret your snide comments about the danger. This appears to be a HIGHLY infectious disease that spreads before it is detected. It could overwhelm the system without our even knowing it. It can even be spread by fluids left on surfaces, not even direct contact with an infected person. How about that for danger! I hope I am wrong, but your laughing this down is idiotic. Now it is in the US. Watch what you touch -- and say.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EBOLA_CHILDREN_MONITORED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-01-13-20-13

It might be nice to have a follow-up on this.

Not a week later, we have an Ebola patient who was diagnosed not in Africa and brought to the US intentionally, but diagnosed in the US. And the patient went to the emergency room on Thursday but was sent back home with an antibiotic. Then he had to call an ambulance on Sunday. In the interim, the symptomatic patient could have passed along the disease.

I think you're guest is way overstating the "deep dark Africa" scare quote meme, but the timing of this event - and the fact that all the networks went with the CDC press conference - may point to the fact that it's a little more present in the US than she expected.

The CDC projects 1.4 million Ebola cases as the worst case scenario. On the Media thinks reporting this authoritative information is distortive because the media is not downplaying “worst case scenario.”

On the Media thinks the “worst case scenario” should be downplayed because the President has made commitments to increasing resources to fight Ebola. Yet, at this point, these are only commitments: there are no concrete plans to deliver more resources and no timeline. The critical shortage of health care providers continues to worsen while the number of cases increases exponentially.

At this point, the worst case scenario is, in fact, the most likely scenario. The media got it right. On the Media got it wrong.

Let's not leave PBS's Newshour off the hook here. They too, in a News Wrap story, distorted this CDC release. Luckily, I'd already read or heard the important nuance elsewhere.