Suggestions for covid19 briefings

THE EDITOR: In these frankly dangerous times, it is in the interest of everyone to prevent miscommunication and to ensure the information is understood. In that vein I have two suggestions to the Government regarding its coronavirus television briefings.

Firstly, to prevent further misunderstandings as occurred on March 31 regarding testing of a particular person, reporters should submit their questions beforehand, say an hour before the briefing. This would give the ministers time to provide a proper response.

Any questions not answered at the briefing could be done later via the internet to properly inform the public and not leave people at the mercy of social media rumours. There would still be an opportunity in the briefing for verbal questions if some new matter arose in the past hour.

Secondly, there should be a split-screen approach so that when a person is talking, the important information is also listed.

For example, it becomes difficult to write down phone numbers or web addresses if they are simply read out as a list. Or, if a person is giving important medical information, it should also be bulleted on the screen to reinforce it and so avoid it being forgotten when the speaker moves to their next point.

Posting the information onscreen would greatly reduce confusion.

EMILE ENIGHTOOLA

via e-mail