The Fear Factor

Near-record cold in Alaska. Yet the NY Times and others recently claimed Alaska is “melting”.

It’s part of the hysteria business which is designed to get people to throw money at problems. Also known as manufacturing consent. Scare people enough and they will agree to do whatever you want.

This is one of the more appalling things aboutr the US media, which is worse at this than any other country. Our media thrives at using scare and fear tactics to get people to agree with bogus agendas the elites who own these media companies want people to go along with.

It’s what journalist John Stossel calls the “Fear Industrial Complex”.

Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming “crisis” and the coming of bird flu.

Bird flu was called the No. 1 threat to the world. But bird flu has killed no one in America, while regular flu—the boring kind—kills tens of thousands. New York City internist Marc Siegel says that after the media hype, his patients didn’t want to hear that.
“I say, ‘You need a flu shot.’ You know the regular flu is killing 36,000 per year. They say, ‘Don’t talk to me about regular flu. What about bird flu?’”

Here’s another example. What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for “20/20,” I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I’m sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.

Parents don’t know that partly because the media hate guns and gun accidents make bigger headlines. Ask yourself which incident would be more likely to be covered on TV.

You have to commend Stossel for being one of those rare journalists who actually questions the hype. That’s a journalist’s job, but most of them aren’t doing theirs. The rarely question anything the Democrats say, and cast everything Republicans say as lies, without checking the veracity of either argument.

But their determination to ram fear issues down our throats is beyond appalling. It’s enabling politicians to pass laws limiting our freedoms and it’s even getting people killed. When the media hyped DDT in the 60s, it got banned and millions died from malaria in places like Africa. Now we know many of the claims about DDT were utterly false. In the 70s they created a climate of fear over Nuclear Power, which left us building coal and oil burning plants instead, and now everyone is saying we should go back to nuclear power because it’s clean and doesn’t require fossil fuels. yet, if they hadn’t blocked it in the first place we would have an energy surplus, trillions of barrels of oil and millions of tons of coal would never have been needed. The pollution that would have never been created is in the millions of tons of toxic particulates and greenhouse gasses. The media and the so called Greens are responsible for that. They were the ones who blocked nuclear power (along with the usual suspects in the Democrats).

Once again we’re faced with the same kind of hype with Global Warming which is threating to have our economies and liberties curtailed all in the name of unproven pseudo-scientific arguments. They want us to cut back on our energy use dramatically, even get rid of our cars, light bulbs, etc,. And they haven’t proven anything. Of all the absurd arguments made by these people, this is one of the most obnoxiously stupid. Yet so many are convinced, mainly because of group think. Not because of the science. if they bothered to objectively study the science, they would see how flawed it is.

It’s important that those of us who think freely and aren’t tricked by the media’s hype, to pass along the truth to others. If the media won’t do their job, we have to do it for them. 

The lack of free and critical thinking is one of the biggest problems we have. The media has done too great a job at 1) convincing people of their authority and 2) repeating themselves so much that authority is never questioned. Our educational system isn’t helping matters either. It’s a sad situation.

For instance, whenever I get into a discussion about global warming with someone who only has a passing interest in it, they parrot the fearmongering environmentalists position because that’s all they’ve ever heard on the news, and the news wouldn’t lie. 1000 scientists wouldn’t lie. Al Gore wouldn’t… well, he would.

I lay out the facts that contradict the basic premises of GW for them, and most people nod along, but I can tell they’re not quite buying it. After all, who the hell am I? What do I know? And I can’t blame them. To someone who watches only the evening news and reads the local paper, there’s no difference between me and a nutjob 9/11 Truther. But at least I try, and hope I give them something to think about later.

Posted by Paul T  on  04/05  at  04:32 PM

If enough people do that,it will make a difference. After all, thats’ how THEY did it. And some in the media are willing to speak out on it, like Stossel.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  04/05  at  07:52 PM

The following statement sharply clarified a lot of things for me: “Newsrooms are full of English Majors.”

Posted by Frederic Woodbridge  on  04/06  at  09:58 AM

They sure as hell aren’t science majors.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  04/06  at  11:57 AM
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