-Caveat Lector- -------------------- Feeding Fears - for Ratings --------------------
Marvin Kitman October 28, 2001 I DON'T SCARE EASY. I grew up in Pittsburgh and live in New Jersey, both places where we don't trust the air unless we can see it. Anybody breathing the air in New Jersey is fearless. I read somewhere it was like smoking three packs of cigarettes a day just living there. I've lived through the arsenic-in-the-water scare at the beginning of the Bush administration. Without meaning to be boastful, we have always had arsenic in the water in New Jersey. We have all the other minerals and metals, too. Our water is so heavy we could make atom bombs with it. I have lived through the hoof and mouth disease scare on TV, even though humans can't get it. I'm tough. Still, watching the coverage of the anthrax story on TV the last two weeks has convinced me that I have anthrax. If you don't think you have anthrax, the 24/7 coverage on our cable news networks makes me wonder what's wrong with you. TV, I'm not ashamed to admit, has managed to scare the dickens out of me. It started with one dead, the first American diagnosed with the deadliest form of anthrax since 1978. Then it rose to two. And rose again to three. In a nation of 281,421,906 (latest census), the odds of getting the Big A are about similar to having a safe falling on you while walking down the street. But that hasn't prevented me from becoming a walking basket case. Such is the power of the basic modern TV journalism principle of giving one piece of news and repeating it all day long. Anway, it's not the numbers that are so deadly. It's the blow to the national brain. We are in a state of perpetual anxiety. Where will it hit next? Why are they doing this to us? Who are they? What did we do to deserve this? As I race around the dial like a rat in a maze trying to get answers, I am watching the news. But the news is making me sick. Or at least sick of watching the news. They keep telling me not to panic, while doing everything possible to panic me. Especially the "breaking news" bulletins on CNN, presumably of special import. And then it turns out that lab tests are in, and a suspected anthrax victim hasn't got it, even though an earlier breaking news flash said, "He might have gotten it." But stop the presses anyway. CNN, the network of breaking news, has left me a broken man. I sit there watching "CNN Headline News," doing my duty to be an informed good citizen. Some entertainment reporter ditz, pressed into hard-news service, is Q&A-ing the CNN medical authority, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, about the anthrax issues "America's most concerned about." He tells us all about false positives and double negatives and spores in the nose, all of which makes me wonder what would turn up if they took swabs of our noses in New Jersey. There are three types of anthrax, Dr. Gupta explained again: skin, inhalation and the kind you get from eating infected meat or working with infected animals, alive or dead. Not to mention feeling sick from watching TV. I don't know which is scarier: the bioterrorists sending anthrax in the mail, or those defending us against it. Our health officials seem somewhat confused. The government tells us to go about our business, not to panic. And then it sends everybody home from work, closing the Capitol. Government spokesmen keep telling us to resume our normal life, which includes, presumably, watching TV, which of course is poisonous. That's what is causing the trouble in the first place. The manipulation, the reiteration of the same bits of carefully selected news make us unquestioning zombies in the hands of the spin doctors. The network news mullahs are doing their best to scare us. But I don't think it's a plot. It's something they do all the time. Remember what they did to us with the Y2K problem, the Great Millennium Computer Scare of 1999? I still have bottles of water and batteries left over from that Armageddon. Take the local news, please. There's the possibility of snow, with accumulations of up to three inches. A mad bomber scare. A lunatic jabbing needles into people's arms on the subways, so by the time you got downtown you'd be a hopeless drug addict. A gas shortage. Killer salads. Giant rats. Internet porno. Crime in the streets. Crime not in the streets. The newscasters don't care - as long as it makes your hair stand up. It's a wonder any of us ever went outside our houses. With the bioterorrists, the fear factor has escalated. It's a bonanza for scareologists in the news departments. As the news unfolded, it was as if there was a fifth column in our midst. This week, the scarecrow campaign turned to smallpox. The talking heads told us not to worry. And they told us how terrorists could start a plague - as if they didn't know. Forget the mails. All they had to do was send somebody into Delray Beach with a suitcase filled with smallpox. The news mullahs, I repeat, are not on the enemy's side. They are only doing this to increase their show ratings. Is it any coincidence that anthrax overcoverage began the third day of the war in Afghanistan, coincidental with declining news ratings and lack of suitable pictures from the peanut butter and bombs of phase one? In defense of the news mullahs, one can also say fear is what moves people. It is the No. 1 mover of the emotions. That is the human condition. But in this semi-civilized world we live in, the most powerful information tool ever invented, television, has to be concerned about such things as the copycat effect, where sickies do things for publicity, to get their 15 seconds on TV. Remember the Tylenol scare of 1982? I'm not trying to minimize the gravity of the situation and the threat of bioterrorism. Whoever is doing this is committing a monstrously evil act, and they should be caught and punished. It's a dreadful business. People have a right to be concerned. Like every American, I'm concerned. And we should try to keep informed. But TV news has to avoid pouring oil on the fire. Soon everybody will be walking around with home-testing swabs to use before entering a train, bus or office. There will be anthrax-sniffing dogs. People unlucky enough to work for the media, government or the postal system will be treated like lepers. TV news has to learn how to keep us informed without causing panic. It will be hard. It's against its very nature. It could be something in its genes. With all its high-tech advances, the medium is still morality-challenged. TV has already destroyed minds in the guise of entertainment. Now it's facing the same challenge in news. The 11th plague is media. Oh well, at least the anthrax scare is good news for doctors, and drug companies making Cipro. But there's a new thing to worry about, according to TV news: whether we should stop the war during Ramadan. If we don't, the cable news is scaring us, the militant Muslims will be angry. But they're already angry at us, as we see by the way the protesters burn our flag, often the same flag 35 times. What is this, the first politically correct war? And for even more thrills, log on to www.marvinkitman.com. To read a selection of Marvin's recent columns, visit www.newsday.com/marvinkitman. Copyright (c) 2001, Newsday, Inc. -------------------- This article originally appeared at: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/columnists/ny-ffkit2432417oct28.column Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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