Underestimating a Catastrophe: U.S. Media Coverage of the Spanish Flu, August to December 1918

Abstract

This historical study examines how the American press covered the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 during the second and deadliest wave of the outbreak. It analyzes the coverage published in the New York Times and the Washington Post between the first of August and the end of December 1918, drawn from the archives of both newspapers, and reads that coverage against the scholarly literature on the pandemic, on wartime censorship, and on the naming and stigmatization of infectious disease. The study argues that the American news media underestimated the catastrophe of the pandemic so as not to distract the public from the news of the First World War, and that it stigmatized Spain in the name it gave the disease, associating the epidemic with a country whose neutral stance during the war had allowed its press to report the outbreak freely. Three roles emerge from the coverage across the five months examined: reassurance that the epidemic would bring no serious consequences, association of the disease with a foreign country, and, only late in the period, the raising of public awareness of the precautions that might limit the spread.