Y Not I

I spoke with my father-in-law today and he repeated his favorite quote, which, I think, rings very true. The quote is Eric Sevareid (1912-1992), American news commentator:

“The biggest big business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement and distribution of anxiety.”

Now think about the media, especially the mainstream media. Think about almost every report on the news, in the newspapers, etc. How much of it causes you to worry about thinks. Let’s think about some of the big current topics. Iraq, global warming, Iran, Korea, terrorism. Think about the 11:00 News. Most of it is crime, murder and rape or trials about crime, murder, rape and corruption, which often involves crime and sex. Think about the weather channel during hurricane season. The storm is shown and the damage that could occur is run over again and again and again. Getting anxious?

I personally believe in being honest and keeping things in perspective. When the media rolls out how many died in Iraq this day/month/year/etc, what do those numbers mean? Let’s compare them to the number of deaths in Washington D.C. In Philadelphia. In Kansas City. Let’s compare them to other conflicts that the military has been involved with. That is never done, and I would think it is because it would lower the anxiety that the news would create.

I don’t think the media does it to create anxiety, I think it is the other way around. I think there is a human tendency to make bad things more important than good things. That is why we stop to look at an accident, why we remember bad things and events better than good events. You remember the server that gave bad service, but the good server goes unnoticed because we expect things to go well. Things going well is what human nature seems to think is the status quo. However that is not guaranteed, it is actually a blessing. This gets into the fact that we, as a whole do not appreciate all the good that we have enough, since most of it we expect as a minimum standard of life. So the negative stands out and gets our attention, and our attention is what the media is looking for. So, like a train wreck, you want to turn away, but you cannot. Watch it if you must, but remember that it does not resemble real life. It is not much different than a TV show or a movie. It may resemble real life in some respects, however it is an exaggeration done to get our attention, and the best way to do that is to make us anxious.