Sting fever

On August 17, The editors at USA Today had a tough call to make — whether to lead the paper with the fact that Elvis Presley has been dead for 25 years — or go with the story about the exotic virus sweeping west faster than wildfires. Anxiety won out over nostalgia, with Elvis relegated to the cover story in the Weekend section. 'West Nile outbreak expected to worsen,' read the top headline in the paper. 'Insect repellant is flying off shelves,' the paper reported. 'Sales of Mosquito Magnets, high-tech mosquito killers that cost up to $1,300 each, have doubled in states most affected. Gardeners, boaters and others who spend time outdoors are swathed in long-sleeved shirts and pants, despite punishing heat.' The culprit is a virus, known to science since 1937, but only bothering Africans, Middle-Easteners and Europeans until 1999, when the first US outbreak struck New York. This year, with several hundred cases and more than a dozen deaths, the disease made its true national premiere. It helps that mosquito season coincides with the traditionally slow news month of August. CBS's Face the Nation, a program normally devoted to policy wonks, congressmen and other talking heads, even took on the disease of the hour. 'Well, as if we didn't have enough to worry about with terrorists and the threat of war with Iraq, in the last few weeks we've gotten a scare back home from the lowly mosquitoes who are carriers of something we've come to know as West Nile virus,' Host Bob Scheiffer told his audience. Mediawatch: The arrival and spread of an exotic new disease in the eastern US has given the media opportunity to grab their readers and viewers during the traditionally slow news period of high summer. Fever pitch: Media coverage of the establishment of West Nile Virus in the eastern US helped fill many pages and viewing slots during the slow news period which stretches over the summer. Stories about the new threat to the US spread even to the British press with some of the coverage from London's Guardian shown above.