A couple of thoughts about the media

It is important to look to the news media for that which it can provide, but to look to other sources to obtain more complete understanding of the reasons events take place and of possible future courses of events.

We are human, fascinated by certain kinds of events. We often pay more attention to the story of a single person than to a trend that affects millions. We will watch a TV news segment about a celebrity, a plane crash, or a bloody crime because we are hard wired to be interested in such things. Newspapers and television networks recognize these interests and provide content to match those interests, both because that is what they do best and because that is how they make money.

However, that kind of information produces a poor and inadequate understanding. It is the McDonnald's of mental nutrition -- fine for a snack but not a good complete diet.

It seems to me that if you want to understand what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan, in reform of U.S. health care or financial regulation, or global warming or global environmental degradation you have to spend time reading in depth treatments of the subject. Expecting the news media to digest complicated problems and feed them to you in bite size pieces is simply foolish.

The United States seems subject to periodic bouts of paranoia.

Think of the fear of domestic anarchists and communists after World War I, the fear of Japanese Americans in World War II that led to imprisoning more than 100,000 children, women and men in concentration camps, the red scare after World War II that allowed McCarthyism (my boarding house at Berkeley was on the California Attorney Generals list of suspect organizations). Today we seem to be involved in a similar fear of jihadists not only abroad but in the U.S. Government.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!

Of course all of these bouts of paranoia had a germ of truth, but each was characterized by fear entirely out of proportion to the threat involved. The problem with such irrationally excessive fear is, in part, that it diverts attention from greater threats that require real public support to reduce.

The risks are real and large from our broken health care financing system, from our excessively dangerous road transportation system, and I would guess from nuclear proliferation and global climate change. We should be focusing on these risks.

I suggest that we not ignore those who monger false risks or who inflate tiny risks, but actively fight against the diffusion of their foolishness, at least by denying them access to the media that should be credible.