ABSTRACT
The American media’s coverage of the “deadly flesh-eating bacteria” story bore all the stylistic hallmarks of their reporting on an outbreak of a deadly disease. Coverage of the “toxic strep” scare-the stories’ format, language, metaphors and images-resonated with American cultural history, folktales and myths. Fearsome similes were employed as a measuring stick against which to gauge the new threat. Hoary medical icons, such as the Black Death, and fashionable ones, such as AIDS, brought to mind visions of an easily contagious fatal or disfiguring disease felling millions. Strep A was not just a bacteria, but, more melodramatically, a “mysterious evil,” a “killer bug,” a “horrifying new scourge.”
