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07/24/2005:

"Scaring Us Senseless"

...The audiovisual media, with their ability to push the public's emotional hot buttons, need to play a more responsible role. Of course it is the news media's job to inform the public about the risk and the incidence of terrorism, but they should try to do so without helping terrorists achieve their objective, which is to terrify.

Television images, in all their vividness and specificity, have an extraordinary power to do just that, and to persuade the viewer that a distant risk is clear and present, while a pressing but underreported one is nothing to worry about.

Like pharmaceutical companies, the news media should study the side effects of their product, one of which is the distortion of the viewer's mental risk map. Because of the way the brain is built, images and striking narratives may well be necessary to get our attention. But just as it takes a diamond to cut a diamond, the news industry should find ways to use images and stories to bring us closer to the statistical truth.
Full: nytimes.com

The news industry is doing exactly what it wants to do, which is to create a terrorized people who will believe anything and accept anything.