Media Whores Part II

Mrs. Ares and I were at a hole in the wall last night having dinner. CNN spewed forth from a black box near the ceiling on today’s fear of the day: The “TB Patient”. (We’ll put aside for a moment that Mr. TB is a world class asshat.) The topic may have been Mr. TB but the theme was fear. The pure and simple peddling of angst and unknown. He’s a little test you can do at home, if you even still watch the news. Look how many segments are loaded with the words fear, uncertain, doubt, concern, possible, or deadly. Charged words that designed to induce an emotional state in the viewer. (Hard to talk about this stuff without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I assure you this is the absolute last thing I am implying.) Ultimately, the news media is selling a product. The product is their version of information. Getting the facts correct is a distant second in priority. Uncertainty is designed to keep you turning in, which in turn keeps the ad revenue flowing in.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina I went to a preparedness seminar put on by a large corporate sponsor. The audience was about 200, mostly civilians with a few public safety people thrown in. Good information on how to get yourself ready. One of the last speakers was a retired CDC official. After his very common sense presentation that only tangentially touched on terrorism there was a Q & A session. The first one to shoot his hand in the air was a pudgy middle aged guy in a suit. He was pretty earnest when he asked what he should do to prepare for the dirty bombs. The CDC guy sighed and the public safety people rolled their eyes. The civilians leaned forward and were fully attentive to the speaker. A patient and lengthy answer, loaded with facts and statistics, was delivered by the CDC guy. Four follow up questions from other members of the audience made it clear that facts weren’t sinking in.

There are 300 million people in this country. Over forty thousand of those die in car accidents every year. Half of those accidents are alcohol related. Sixteen thousand people are murdered, most by people they know. Cardiovascular disease killed over 800,000 in 2004. Thus far dirty bombs have killed exactly no one. In the event of a dirty bomb more people will be killed in traffic accidents attempting to flee than from radiation. But the body politic is swallowing the line that dirty bombs are the thing to fear in their lives. Overweight smokers that live in the suburbs and commute over 50 miles a day primarily fear gamma radiation. This is learned behavior, and guess where it was learned?

Barry Glassner, in his absolutely excellent book Culture of Fear, talks at length about this idea. Culture of Fear is probably the most infuriating book you will ever love. One little factoid from the book is worth repeating. During the ‘90’s the murder rate declined by about 20%(if memory serves, Athena has my copy of the book). The reporting of murder by the main stream media rose by 600%. Guess how we see our world? Not as it is but as it is presented to us. Folks, there are an enormous amount of people going forth into society each day. What is truly amazing are all the bad things that don’t happen.

Ares