Healthcare Workforce in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic: The New York Times and the Washington Post

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Media Source Outline
Findings and Analysis
Reflection and Conclusion
References

Introduction

The extent to which modern society perceives and evaluates information has currently become extremely correlated with the approaches media choose to portray relevant news and information. Thus, when tackling topics that are of paramount importance to society, media sources are to understand the scopes of responsibility they should obtain to operate truthful and objective information. Despite the common belief that newspapers as a medium lost their relevance many years ago, modern recipients are likely to address either printed or digital versions of popular newspapers in pursuit of objective data (Radcliffe and Ali, 2017). Moreover, the perception of information from both printed and digital resources does not differ as drastically as it is generally understood by the broad public (Neijens and Voorveld, 2018). As a result, one may assume that analyzing the information represented in the digital replicas of newspapers is important in terms of realizing how social cognition may be controlled and even manipulated by media sources.

When comparing the information presented by social media platforms and publicist media such as newspapers, it would be reasonable to justify that the latter is generally considered more objective and trustworthy (Allington et al., 2020). For this reason, people reading these media sources seldom ponder the scopes of objectivity in the information presented, as they perceive professional journalism as inherently impartial and deprived of personal feelings on the matter outlined. Such a misconception is especially evident considering the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the amount of data published hourly differs greatly across the media sources. Hence, the primary aim of the present report is to analyze how such media sources as The New York Times and The Washington Post convey the data concerning the current state of the healthcare workforce in the context of the pandemic pressure.

Media Source Outline

One of the major criteria considered when searching for media sources was their credibility, as the paper’s good reputation contributes to people’s intentions to read the articles without critical evaluation and fact-check. Thus, according to the Pew Research Center (2019), The New York Times, along with The Washington Post, were regarded as some of the most influential and credible digital media sources in the state. Considering the relative equality of these sources in terms of reputation, they were chosen to demonstrate how professional journalism could implicitly represent biases and consideration of the whole editorial service.

Findings and Analysis

The primary research topic chosen for the analysis was the representation of healthcare workers through the prism of the COVID-19 challenges they face every day. The major concepts. Analyzed throughout the texts included the linguistic style, intertextuality, and narrative. Thus, the first text found in The New York Times is written by A. Gardiner (2021), and it revolves around the issue of healthcare workers who continue to work under the pandemic condition after COVID-19 took away someone from their closest surroundings. The article itself is called ‘A year of risk, fear, and loss for families in medicine: for many nurses and doctors, medicine was an inherited calling and one that bound couples. Then the virus threatened the ones they love’ (Gardiner, 2021, para. 1). Such a title reveals much information about the text, as it explicitly uses such emotionally colored lexis as ‘fear,’ ‘loss,’ ‘love,’ etc.

Thus, it may be assumed that the primary intention of the author was to appeal emotionally to the reader, so the text should be perceived more as expressive rather than rhetic, or the one rendering a non-ambiguous sense of the utterance. The very article is presented in the form of a semi-structured interview encompassing at least three respondents. The vast majority of information was rendered through direct quotations either in 1st or 3rd person, emphasizing the idea that the thoughts outlined were by no means correlated with the author’s subjective perception.

Another article found in The NY Times concerned the issue of workforce shortage caused by the pandemic. It is written by R. Abelson (2020), and it is called ‘Doctors are calling it quits under the stress of the pandemic: thousands of medical practices are closing, as doctors and nurses decide to retire early or shift to less intense jobs’. Like the previous article, such a heading is rather expressive due to the usage of such phrases as ‘thousands of medical practices,’ as they draw attention yet provide no explicit data. As far as the very narrative is concerned, it may be outlined that the author manages to combine an expressive component of referring to one’s subjective ideas presented during a semi-structured interview and quantitative data published by other credible sources.

The second media source tackled in the report was The Washington Post. The two articles encountered in the newspaper have seemingly different communicative intentions, yet the conclusions drawn from the texts remain rather coherent. Thus, the first article written by Arnold-Forster and Schotland (2021) is called ‘Covid-19 only exacerbated longer pattern of health-care worker stress’. The article represents a summary of quantitative data collected from a variety of primary sources. However, despite the academic tone, the authors identify themselves with the reader by using 2nd person pronouns in the plural. The narration obtains a diachronic perspective, as it dwells on the historical development of health-care professionals’ perception of their job and vocation while comparing the situation with the context of the United Kingdom.

The next article is written by W. Wan (2021), and it is called ‘Burned out by the pandemic, 3 in 10 health-care workers consider leaving the profession: after a year of trauma, doctors, nurses, and other health workers are struggling to cope. Similar to The NY Times, this article comprises the experiences of various medical professionals to appeal to the broad public. However, a significant feature of the present narration is the fact that these stories are closely interrelated with the quantitative data presented by credible sociological institutions. Thus, the functional aim of such a news story is to empirically justify the relevance of data behind the process of health care and coping mechanisms.

When analyzing these sources, it is of paramount importance to assess the notion of intertextuality that may be regarded through the prism of the target audience of the aforementioned newspapers. Thus, the target audience of The NY Times, more than 70% of the readers, are Democrats with a university degree (Djordjevic, 2021). Considering such data, it would be reasonable to assume that the code embedded in the articles consists of many implications that represent the values specific to the audience. Democrats, who comprise the vast majority of the newspaper readers, are notorious for their intentions to rebuild the flawed health care system across the US to secure both quality and equity (‘Health care,’ n.d.). For this reason, the manifestation of healthcare workers’ stress implicitly addresses the overall challenge of labor allocation and respect within the healthcare community.

The target audience of The Washington Post is practically the same, although there is no publicly available information on the share of Democratic readership (‘Audience research: demographics,’ n.d.). For this reason, it may be concluded that both these media sources, although providing relevant and proven quantitative data, could not be perceived as unbiased and objective. Every article discussed in the report implicitly encourages people to act to modify the situation and secure better conditions for health care workers. However, the authors are driven by the presupposition that people reading the text are middle-aged white Democrats who happen to be the most powerful social class in the national context.

Reflection and Conclusion

Having closely analyzed the peculiarities of media’s presentation of similar topics, one may conclude that the modern recipient is implicitly deprived of the right to trust the information presented. Instead, the reader should question the primary message of the text by questioning the lexis and details outlined. For example, when evaluating the information represented in all four texts on the matter of healthcare workers’ well-being, it becomes evident that the authors are convinced that everyone reading the article is already aware of the deplorable situation in the realm of national health care. The vast majority of manipulations are employed rather discreetly, drawing the reader’s attention through emotive lexis, generalization, use of metaphors, and strong narrative. Considering this scenario, recipients are to take into account the primary fact-checked data before evaluating it from the narrator’s perspective.

References

Abelson, R. (2020) Doctors are calling it quits under stress of the pandemic. Web.

Allington, D. et al. (2020) ‘Health-protective behaviour, social media usage and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency’, Psychological Medicine, pp.1-7.

Arnold-Forster, A., and Schotland, S. (2021) Covid-19 only exacerbated a longer pattern of health-care worker stress. Web.

Audience research: demographics. (n.d.) Web.

Djordjevic, M. (2021) 25 insightful New York Times readership statistics [the 2021 edition]. Web.

Gardiner, A. (2021) A year of risk, fear and loss for families in medicine. Web.

Health care. (n.d.) Web.

Neijens, P.C. and Voorveld, H.A. (2018) ‘Digital replica editions versus printed newspapers: Different reading styles? Different recall?’ New Media & Society, 20(2), pp.760-776.

Pew Research Center. (2019) State of news media methodology.Web.

Radcliffe, D. and Ali, C. (2017) Local news in a digital world: small-market newspapers in the digital age. Columbia Journalism School.

Wan, W. (2021) Burned out by the pandemic, 3 in 10 health-care workers consider leaving the profession. Web.

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