Jan. 10, 2004 - 21:52 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Proportional

An article by Professor Michael Tracy of the University Of Colorado at Boulder School of Jounalism and Mass Communications in January 10th The Rocky Mountain News. Consider the source - - - - Headlined - "Scare tactics are media favorites."

Under that in smaller bold, "True threats to physical well-being often ignored at expense of latest cry of alarm."

He comes up with some figures which sound about right to me and in proportion with what I have read other places. He starts off, "There was an interesting editorial in the Rocky Mountain News on January 3. It asked "Was ephedra a risk ?" referring to the federal decision to ban the diet supplement on the grounds of the risks associated with it. The editorial concluded that the risks from the supplement were considerably exaggerated, pointing to the greater danger from other substances such as Tylenol."

Mr. Tracey observes, "The Bush administration's decision to ban ephedra received extensive media coverage, including a live telecast of the announcement of the ban, coverage that was way out of proportion to the actual dangers of the substance. But that is what the media are constantly doing exaggerating, hyping, overstating the dangers of the latest "bug," "threat," "plague." Then Mr. Tracey mentions SARS. "The News alone in its archives has 317 stories involving the illness. The coverage was such, the fears induced such, that global travel was affected."

Mr. Tracey continues, "Or how about the mad cow disease, which has received an enormous amount of coverage in recent weeks ? Typical was the headline in the News on December 24, at the top of page 1, in big, bold, black letters:'Mad cow alert.' That term "alert" particularly caught the eye since it jibed nicely with the fact that we live in an age of perpetual "terror alerts." The story inside was not as dramatic and, in fact if read carefully, might have led the reader to wonder why the big scary headline."

Then comes the part that emphasizes the ballooning of the news. Mr. Tracey says, "What of the realities? According to a report from the World Health Organization in November SARS killed 700 people globally. Apart from a small number of deaths in Canada, North America remains untouched. As far as mad cow, Europe had just 153 human deaths -- a figure that was culled from the News story on Page 24, that belied the doom-laden tones of the Page 1 headline and is not much greater than the number of people in the United States who die from bee and wasp stings each year.

He makes the point, "The really serious health hazards simply do not get the same kind of headline-grabbing attention. Acording to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2001 700,142 died of heart disease in the United States. Yet when was the last time you saw a headline to a story declaring that '1,918 people were killed yesterday by heart disease/Another 1,918 will die today" ?

More figures coming yet, Mr. Tracey says, "And where are the fearful headlines, acres of coverage for the 553,768 people who die of cancer, or the 53,000 who die from Alzheimer's, of the 4 million deaths globally caused by diarrhea from polluted water ? Then there are the 32,000 people who, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine, die each year in hospitals from adverse reactions to prescribed medication; and the 7,600 annual deaths and the 76,000 hospitalizations, from what are called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, a category which includes aspirin and ibuprofen. He mentions HIV-AIDS and the hype beginning in the 80's, "In the middle 1980's the talk show host Oprah Winfrey, told her audience that 20 percent of all heterosexuals would be 'dead of AIDS' by 1990." And Mr. Tracey cites a few more exaggerations and then observes, "In researching this piece, I was to note that in the official statistics for mortality in the U.S. today, HIV/AIDS didn't even figure in the top 15."

Then his paragraph, "The point is quite simple: the media have a consistent habit of exaggerating health threats that are dramatic but not that serious, and underplaying those that are less dramatic, more endemic and familiar, but vastly more serious."