Friday Late Night Open Thread
57 minutes ago
Monday, May 4, 2009
Media's Grip on Society
It is a curious thing, the effect that the media has on society. The panic that the media can cause over such mediocre topics is nothing less than frightening. Though the panic has died down, the swine flu continues to be one of the biggest stories in the news. Now finding the flu is no worse than the average flu, it is comical that people were so frightened of it. I feel that the media, to get the attention of the people, jump to the worst case scenario without coming to some logical explanation for events. It is apparent with this swine flu panic, people read the newspaper, turn on any news channel, or surf the web and they are bombarded by articles or comments about the flu. Many people find that the media is a trustworthy source, but is it? It has taken over a week for them to come to some conclusion that the flu is not as harmful as they were previously stating. This is because the media is not there to only provide news anymore, it is there to speculate and observe society. As soon as it catches a wiff of something controversial, it pounces; and I feel that this is the case with the whole swine (H1N1) flu panic.
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9 comments:
I completely agree. The media sensationalizes everything, blowing things such as the swine flu way out of proportion. When talk of the swine flu first developed, everyone was in a frenzy. I saw about a million posts on facebook about it and heard the words "swine flu" from almost everyone who passed me in the hallways at school. My friend even told me she heard that everyone who got it died. Seeing as though it is really just a different type of flu not much more harmful than the common flu, where would she come up with the idea everyone who gets it dies? The media of course. Although the media didn't say it causes death in all, it exaggerates stories and highlights the scenarios in which death did occur, which in the United States was only one person. The media has a lot of influence on the American public, and their ability to affect our mindset and instill fear in us is clearly demonstrated in the swine flu panic.
I agree that the media may unneccessary panic about various issues. In this case especially we think this because it turns out that H1N1 is harmless. But what if it hadn't been? What if H1N1 had turned out to be as serious as the media hyped it up to be. In that case we would be greatful that the media brought the problem to our attention. In fact, we would be incredibly upset that no one had bothered to warn us that this flu was so serious. So it's a catch-22, especially with issues like diseases, you can never really know how bad things are going to be, so isn't it better to be safe than sorry? If you think back to hurricane Katrina, isn't it possible that if the media had made a bigger deal about it that the government would have been forced to take more action? In that case, we weren't worried enough about what was going to happen. So, we all spent a week of our lives talking about the swine flu, that hardly hurts any of us. What would have hurt us is not being prepared, which the media panic forced us to do.
I completely agree with you. However, the manner that the media addressed the problem of the flu was incorrect. It cause mass panic. What the media must do is step back and look at the big picture of viruses. Because it would have been quite simple to look at the stats on the common flu. If they had done this sooner, they would have found that 30,000 people die of the common flu each year just in the U.S. The media musn't make assertians like they did without sufficient research.
I think the main misleading thing about swine flu that the media misreported on was the death count in Mexico. I'll admit that the media coerced me into doing a bit of research on swine flu that week and scared me a bit to the point that I was arguing that we should be taking watch of swine flu like we did SARS, etc. I primarily felt threatened that this swine flu might develop in the United States due to its origins in our neighboring country Mexico as opposed to Asia, and the fact that I could have sworn I heard a reported 160+ death count in a span of 2-3 days from swine flu sometime during that panic week, which I believe would have justified a bit of panic. I still don't have a definite idea of what the death count was (I wonder why) but I do believe I heard on the radio that the real death count in Mexico from swine flu was about 10. Hmm...
I don't think it was an inappropriate reaction, and though I agree with Zach that the media shouldn't speculate, I hardly think this presents a Schenck-like "clear and present danger" or a flawed story with "malicious intent."
It's important for the media to "pounce" on a subject like this because, like Ms. Gavette said, we are better off safe than sorry.
Derek, I believe as of today, May 6th, the number you were looking for is 42. This is a link to the AP article: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzz357patY4-QaJFvo9O95zMM_EQD980PKGG4
As with any communicable disease, up to date reports, no matter how overblown they are, are necessary. Who knows; With the rate at which viruses multiply and mutate, the virus could have become much more deadly had we ignored it and let people spread it unknowingly.
Once again, better safe than sorry.
That basically sums it up. I am not even going to lie I was afraid at first just because every single news station was broadcasting it and it even showed up on ESPN. If you cannot rely on the news stations to give out correct information then that really is terrible. Well I give it up to the news stations on being able to scare people but Colbert did a great job of making fun of the fuss over the flu. Look it up on youtube. Hilarious. But anyways there are more important things to focus on like the economy. And I completely agree with Zach.
Perhaps I didn't articulate my point well enough. The idea that I was trying to convey is that the media has too much control over society. Yes, it is a good thing for the media to provide us with news and speculate on that news. However, their speculation has too much control over us. If citizens get this frightened from a flu that ended up not being any more dangerous than the common flu, what what would happen if the media is wrong about something far worse? The hold that the media has could cause far worse results. The whole flu example is a potentially mild result.
yeah the media is really good at exaggerating things that happen and then cause us to worry and stress out about things are not necessary to stress out about. like the swine flu thing scared a lot of people and got mass attention. i know the people on the east coast werent worried but since we are so close to mexico it causes us to panic. we need to learn about something fully and completely understand it before we cause a panic like this. i think this is the medias job and they are not doing good at it.
The media's role of gatekeeper allows it to select which issues to focus on. Of course, swine flu was something people wanted to know more about.. I dont think the media made many false statements about the flu, but the constant coverage of the flu is what worried people. (It's on the news 24/7... it must be the new Black Death!)... Yes, the media has a lot of influence on society. But this can also be a good thing as the media is an excellent tool for featuring important issues and educating the public.
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