- Aug 4, 2011
- 81,129
- 14,024
- 2,190
Sick of the media telling you not to "panic" every time there's an intelligent discussion about the risks of ebola (or enterovirus, or terrorist attacks, or yellow fever, or whatever)?
"It seems that every time new information about Ebola’s spread comes out, media schoolmarms lecture people who are discussing it. Normal discussions are labeled “hysteria” and “panic.”
In a 2004 pamphlet, Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard describe this as “Panic Panic.” They tell people that actual panic is rare and that people usually act fairly calm during crises. They also say not to ascribe panic to what is normal disobedience, mistrust, worry and even excessive caution. These things are not panic, they say. “e careful not to project your own panic (or your performance anxiety) onto the public,” they write. Finally, don’t try to over-reassure or mislead people as this ends up provoking the very thing you claim you’re trying to avoid."
"...
most Americans find the idea of short-term quarantines to be not as radical as they seem to a media that might be invested in, oh, I don’t know, a pre-election narrative that things aren’t being poorly managed by, say, the Obama administration. To just take one hypothetical.
Yes, our media are beyond trusting of what they term “expert” opinion, while most Americans have noticed that experts might not be as expert as they themselves think they are. See, for example, “President Obama Already Has An Ebola Czar. Where Is She?” Quick side note that this expert — Dr. Nicole Lurie — finally showed up in public at a Hill hearing to tell everyone “There is an epidemic of fear” in the United States. Some people in the media look at these almost religious statements and nod their heads and feel superior and others in the rest of the country point at her and say, “Wait, she was the one who passed over the Ebola drug that works to give money to a now-bankrupt firm owned by a big Obama donor, right?”
Media s Panic Panic Is Reaching New Annoying Levels With Quarantines
"It seems that every time new information about Ebola’s spread comes out, media schoolmarms lecture people who are discussing it. Normal discussions are labeled “hysteria” and “panic.”
In a 2004 pamphlet, Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard describe this as “Panic Panic.” They tell people that actual panic is rare and that people usually act fairly calm during crises. They also say not to ascribe panic to what is normal disobedience, mistrust, worry and even excessive caution. These things are not panic, they say. “e careful not to project your own panic (or your performance anxiety) onto the public,” they write. Finally, don’t try to over-reassure or mislead people as this ends up provoking the very thing you claim you’re trying to avoid."
"...
most Americans find the idea of short-term quarantines to be not as radical as they seem to a media that might be invested in, oh, I don’t know, a pre-election narrative that things aren’t being poorly managed by, say, the Obama administration. To just take one hypothetical.
Yes, our media are beyond trusting of what they term “expert” opinion, while most Americans have noticed that experts might not be as expert as they themselves think they are. See, for example, “President Obama Already Has An Ebola Czar. Where Is She?” Quick side note that this expert — Dr. Nicole Lurie — finally showed up in public at a Hill hearing to tell everyone “There is an epidemic of fear” in the United States. Some people in the media look at these almost religious statements and nod their heads and feel superior and others in the rest of the country point at her and say, “Wait, she was the one who passed over the Ebola drug that works to give money to a now-bankrupt firm owned by a big Obama donor, right?”
Media s Panic Panic Is Reaching New Annoying Levels With Quarantines
