An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings
The Chadcast – Sickness and Hype
In this week’s podcast, The Chad takes on media hype and bias.
I will be the first to admit that I am a news junkie. One problem we have is that there is now 24 hour news coverage, which leads to stations grabbing onto whatever is necessary to fill those 24 hours. Another problem is that there are so many different news channels, in order to keep a viewer tuned in to a particular channel, that station has to create enough interest to hold on to a viewer. So, what’s a TV executive to do? Easy – create a panic. The Swine Flu stories are just the latest example of a media induced panic. While I agree that caution was/is needed, the absolute panic was ridiculous. Here in Wisconsin, schools were closing all over the state before we had a single confirmed case. This was, I believe, a result of hearing about the virus everywhere we turned; on the radio, the network news, the cable news. If one were to sit back, take a breath and think about it, the “regular” flu kills tens of thousands of people every year. Why do we not close schools then? Even my normally intelligent husband got caught up in the panic; he didn’t want me to get on a plane last week. Needless to say, I did get on the plane and I’m still here, healthy (relatively speaking) as always. I think it was irresponsible of the media to build this into something far more dire than it really was.
As far as media bias is concerned, I was going to post my thoughts on that particular subject, but time is short and my thoughts are not – I’ll save that for another day.
Enjoy the podcast!
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