Although many don’t concur about the Swine Flu’s handling from the world media, there is no dispute that its overall topic has assumed a lot more attention in the political and technological community than expected. And as the H1N1 flu virus seems to take a back seat in the media’s more promontory coverage of Arlen Spector’s seniority battle and baseball’s internal drug problem, the time for evaluation of the press has come.

One of the best thought out analysis was from foreign policy writer Adam Elkus, who responded to claims that social networking and the microblogging empire known as Twitter have perpetuated the already escalating sensationalistic views of the swine flu’s “media scare.” He argues:

Twitter neither originated the swine flu hysteria nor substantially amplified it. Instead, sensationalist reporting by mainstream media outlets stimulates popular hysteria by saturating the public with wave after wave of distorted information. Swine flu undeniably poses a major threat that requires urgent and comprehensive response, but media reports lack any sense of perspective, caution, or restrain…

…So far, the only casualty of the current crisis outside of Mexico has been a young Mexican boy visiting Texas. But you’d never know this from the tenor of MSM coverage, always on the verge of declaring that a snout-faced horseman of the apocalypse has descended to cleanse the unbelievers. Since blogs and microblogs are parasitic mediums, the MSM tsunami of fear and terror inevitably creates ripples in the social media ecosystem.

Elkus clearly outlines that the media did in fact superfluously cover the swine flu, but the larger meaning of this comes with a lesson in itself — as reliable and accurate reporting becomes more and more rare, one must make the decision him/herself to decide if in fact what they are reading is legitimate.

Take for example an associated press report, where the World Health Organization is quoted in saying that “2 Billion People could get swine flu.” Of course, the number 2 billion in the headline most likely turned almost as many heads, but the lack of explanation puts the headline claim word “get” in question. In what degree would each of these 2 billion contract swine flu? The shortage of elaboration on the account of the associated press is exactly what drives thousands uninformed victims of these sensationalist reports to hospitals each day because of the slightest cough they may have contracted.

Now enter Twitter and social media.

As the world becomes more and more prone to mass information intake in smaller doses, Twitter has been the shoe-in fit; simplistic posting in rapid succession. And although this has proved vital to victims of the Mumbai attacks, it has been overused — the main stream media has been forced to adapt to its one line story summarization. And thus, the media’s one time lust for perfectionistic reporting has disintegrated into a demand for an expeditious spring of answers — all in 140 characters.

And so went Twitter. Exploding into an array of panicked tweets numbering into the millions, all who visited the microblogging platform would see the multitude of misguided alarm. And because of the hole the media has essentially dug the US in to, it is going to take, what many assume, an event on the level of a prime-time presidential conference to quiet down what is now raging on.