Why is there so much panic in the media?
The majority of the United States population reads about everyday catastrophes and bad things happening around the world through newspapers or, more importantly, the Internet. That leads to no doubt that there are some people out there that completely disregard real journalism and write what ever they feel. Blogs are an example of this. People are able to post anything they like with their full opinions throughout the entire post.
This site gives readers an insight into how media can induce panic throughout the nation. They have a top 40 threats to the world as of January 25th through March 8th, 2008.
In this article about Gold, they say that people are going on “panic buys” because of the low supply of it. With the word “panic” in the article it
implies that there is a need for people to have it and that everyone else should go out and buy it too. The fact that they can put one word in there like that and it causes people to believe that they need to have something is amazing.
This article about Swine Flu really explains how the media has over done the whole thing. It does a great job in stating that the media has totally blown the whole thing out of proportion. Along with that it does report on the situation and not just tell what should be done.
Taking everyday things and blowing them way out of proportion can be a very bad thing for the world. If the media covers a topic over and over again it can give the public the idea that this is a important topic that needs to be taken care of right now. If the media just used facts and not over done stories I think there wouldn’t be so much panic in the world.
Blogs are not a helpfully tool in this type of media either. Granted I am writing one right now, but most of them are opinion blogs by people who want to be herd. I think people need to do some deep investigation in what they are writing about before they post it on the web.
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Comments
I love that Panic Watch site, Sam! I am stealing this source from you and using it in the blog next year. I’ll give you credit, of course. Thank you for finding it. It does a great job of tracking this exact issue using real life examples.
Your blog is excellent. You find some great examples and even talk about how blogs can blow this up even more by adding a constant stream of uninformed opinions to the mix. You’re exactly right that most blogs aren’t well-researched and are mostly shoot-from-the-hip reactions and opinions that can do more to fuel the fire than put it out.
Thanks for a great blog!
Posted by: McCallum | May 17th, 2010 14:35