News media like scaring us !

Title: News media like scaring us

Source: T-U Viewpoint section, Sunday Mar. 25,2007

Writer: John Stossel

Here is an interesting article about the news media in all forms, TV, radio and print. They are using words and half information to scare the living daylights out of us. They are hitting our scare factor beyond what is necessary by overstating or sensationalizing things that deal with our health, food products we eat, pesticides, etc. When writing or speaking of these things they are supporting advocate groups and are not supplying the public with backup information or the other side of the story. They are scaring the general public with words and generate panic. Once again I am sorry, but, my article was not available on the net....so I will hand type it out for you to read.

ARTICLE BELOW:
I'm embarrassed by my profession.
Consumer reporters should warn you about life's important risks, but instead, we mislead you about dubious risks.
I started thinking about this when interviewing Ralph Nader years ago, before he stopped speaking to me. Nader worried about almost everything.
Food? "It can spoil in your own refregerator."
Chicken? "It's contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides."
Flying? "Inadequate maintenance."
Cartpet? "Rugs are dirt collectors. And dirt collectors mean internal, indoor air pollution."
Coffee? "Caffeine is not very good for you."
He went on and on. Just interviewing him was exhausting. Nader and interest groups like his fuel the Fear Industrial Complex? The network of activists, government bureaucrats, and trial lawyers who profit by scaring people.
The media should be skeptical of their prophesies of doom, but we rarely are.
My TV program, 20/20, has done frightening reports on the dangers of paper shredders, soccer goals, lawn chemicals, cell phones, garage-door openers and more.
There's always some truth behind the scares - someone got hurt, or some study somewhere found a risk.
But we rarely put the danger in perspective. We give you a breathless rush of alarm over every possibility, often delivered with a throbbing rock beat.
Sometimes we don't even get the nubmers right. Remember the summer of the shark? It was nonsense. That summer the number of shark attacks was hardly different from two previous years. But in those other years we had an election to cover, or O.J. was on trial. Mid-summer 2001 didn't bring many sexy stories, so Time did a cover story on "the Summer of the Shark."
It should have embarrassed the media into putting risks in perspective. But it didn't.
Listening to us, you'd think our growing exposure to pesticides, food additives and other mysterious chemicals has created America's "cancer epidemic." But there is no cancer epidemic - cancer incidence is flat, and death rates have been falling for years. But such good news doesn't get much play. No interest groups benefit from it.
Remember the breast-implant scare? Some lawyers and activists said silicone from breast implants caused lupus, breast cancer and more. Connie Chung did a scare story on CBS, the FDA banned silicone implants, and soon many women were certain that their medical problems were caused by their implants.
How could they not think that? The Fear Industrial Complex told them they were being slowly poisoned. Lawyer John O'Quinn helped spread the fear and reaped the reward. He sued implant makers again and again until they paid his clients over $1 billion. Fortune called O'Qunn and his partner "lawyers from hell." O'Quinn won't say how much money he made from these lawsuits, but he's now rich enough to have a warehouse that holds 900 valuable cars.
After the suits from O'Quinn and others bankrupted implant maker Dow Corning, and after many women were terrorized, scientists started saying there's no evidence that silicone causes autoimmune disease and cancer. Study after study failed to find a link.
Sherine Gabriel, chair of the department of health sciences research at the Mayo Clinic, announces that there was "no significant difference in the occurrence of connective tissue diseases between the women who had the implants and the women who did not."
The FDA has now re-approved silicone implants, and thousnands of women are having implants inserted, implants that contain the very same silicone that was used before.
So has O'Quinn apologized for scaring women and bankrupting Dow Corning? No. Did he give the money back? Of course not. The lawyers never do. Instead, O'Quinn impugns the authors of the medical studies. "Who bought and paid for that science?" he said to me, indignantly. He told me he's prond to sue rich businessmen.
Reporters rely on lawyers like O'Quinn bureaucracies like the FDA and interest groups like Nader's to give us safety warnings and "dirt" on evil companies. We should be more skeptical.
The Fear Industrial Complex has motives of its own.

Nancy's Comment:

This is terrible, but all most of us are capable of is being too gullible. We either read about it or hear about it on the radio or TV. Unless we are part of the health or food industry we aren't all that knowledgeable about these scares, but many readers and listeners get panicky and go to extremes to avoid them. I think we tend to have to much faith in the media reporting. Many of us probably feel that surely there has been enough research, before reporting scares to the general public. And of course when we finally do get answers, we start to lose faith, but in who? I think according to this story it should be in those that give us our daily news, and I agree with the writer of this article....Shame on them. But who are we to believe and how much of what we are told should we believe...Some day all that sensationalism might kill us all....Your comments please.

What do they look like?

This article comes from last week's Sunday edition of the T-U edition.

The article was, I think from the entertainment section. The heading said Journalists are great. but let's get real..
The article was about a new movie release call Zodiac in which Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr.play two journalists bent on cracking the case of the Zodiac a whacked out serial killer. They are dressed in jackets and ties and seem to have a more conformed formal appearance. This is just a movie, they seem like they want to protray jounalists in a conservative way. Is this the idea of how given the way the press and movie people want to protray them and we should except this idea. Since this article was not available for linkage to my blog, let me rewrite it for you.

In the new flick zZodfiac(just released on Friday). mega cuties Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. play two journalist bent on cracking the case of the Zodiac, a whacked-out serial killer from the 1960's.
While us folks onin the newspaper bix are equally courageous and morally righteous. I'm gonna level with you : Journalists don't look like that. If we did, we'd be America's next top models--or hosts of our own shopping show on VC.
This Hollywood warp isn't journalish-specific, however don't most doctors look more like McCrabby rather that McDreamy?

Nancy Comment: So what do you think a journalist looks like. Is he/she wearing blue jeans and sunglasses. Does his upbringing and neighborhood have influences on his style of writing. Does life's experiences play a part of his writing or his interests. I think journalists write on be half of their background and experiences personal or professional. So how do you imagine the journalist that writes a story or column. Does his story satisfy or interest you, and if it does, you might wonder why. If you had to describe him/her by the column or story you just read, what would they look like and what are their morals. Are they a Harvard graduate or did they graduate FCCJ. Does their background affect their writing. Are they biased in any way? And one last question...Why do the movies portray them as well-dressed, suit and tie people. Is this acceptable, or is this the way we want to see them portrayed. I really want to see some comments on this one....had me baffled.....

How readers interpret writers new stories

Writer: Wayne Ezell

Source: Sunday T-U Mar 4, Viewpoint section

I found this article in the Sunday newspaper about the reaction to a news article that upset a lot of readers. It was about mis-interpreting a story about the American people learning to speak Spanish as a second language. The article explained further that some local companies were providing Spanish classes for employees, and some adults were signing up at FCCJ for Spanish classes. Readers were upset by this article saying that if you come to American as a spanish speaking you should go to class to learn English, our official language. It explained that people are learning Spanish to better communicate customers. What the writer wrote and the point he was expressing didn't seem to come across to his readers. (PLEASE NOTE: there are three different articles in this one article, I am blogging on the first one) To get you opinion on the article click here

Nancy Comment:

I think this must happen a lot. As the world changes and more people are affected they the changes they have more opinions and are more outspoken about them. I think these newspaper writers need to re-read their articles more carefully and maybe consider writing other sides to the story. He mig;ht have mentioned the fact that Spanish speaking people moving to our country might take English classes to better understand Americans.