The book brings up some things about the media being able to scare people into doing things or taking action on an issue. The weather man knows that in order for the growth of food and survival of people it needs to rain; yet every time it does rain is portrayed as something bad or to be feared. Every time this winter when in snowed less than two inches wasn’t it portrayed on the news as a nasty snow storm moving through our area. Some times that they predicted a nasty snow storm all of the private schools closed the day before it snowed and we ended up with little to no snow the next day because everthing that fell melted in the morning. The news tells us the worst case scenario and the worst stories that they could find. The Michael Moore film on gun control showed examples of this, America sees all these things that only make for interesting stories that would get ratings. If a kid gets shot people tune in to hear what happened, but if a new stop sign is installed somewhere or someone gets an award for doing something that is not a story. I’ve seen headline like, “next on [insert news station] find out what is in your apple juice and can it be killing you.” I know that arsenic is in apple juice, but that has been in apple juice long before the story broke about it being in the popular apple drink amongst children. Arsenic is naturally found in apples so it will only be in its natural form and amount when it is in juice form, yet the media ran with it blowing it out of proportion, scaring people, and then saying, “Well it isn’t a big deal, it won’t kill you.”
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