The media is a hall of mirrors

As I write these words, the first Swine Flu death in the US is being reported in Texas. Obama has offered offical condolences. The media is exploding right on schedule just like Old Faithful geyser. Every news anchor in America is simply sputtering with excitement about Swine Flu.

Anybody out there know how many Americans die of “normal” flu each year in a “normal” flu season? According to the CDC estimate, there are about 36,000 “normal” flu deaths each year. Swine flu has some distance to go.

I recall West Nile Fever. Back when that was the media’s hot way to die, you could see highway billboards warning you about it. In 2007, 124 deaths were reported with a total mortality rate much less than 4%. That’s about one day’s worth of highway deaths! 41,059 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes that same year.

But West Nile was a great excuse for spraying every bird in America with more poison.

The media defends their reporting by pointing out that it’s a free and competitive market. They just report the news that people want to hear about. There’s some real truth to that. But that just leads to the next question, “Why are we like that?”

“Peggy” recently sent me a private email. She’s been reading, The Face On Your Plate. She quoted from a chapter titled Denial.

“Denial in the largest sense in which we so often use it today is simply psychic defense against an overwhelming reality. . . . It is impossible to read any newspaper without either coming across the direct use of the word . . . In fact, [it's] the only way to read the paper every day about all the hunger, misery, and atrocities . . .”

“Here are just a few recent news stories that refer to the concept of denial:

“The New York Times on June 4, 2008, published an op-ed piece titled “The Science of Denial” about how the Bush administration has done everything possible to avoid addressing climate change, essentially by indulging itself in massive denial.

“Neal Pierce in a recent Seattle Times column discussed the Southwestern and Southeastern droughts, as well as the Western ‘flame zone,’ where mega-fires are increasingly the norm, in order to reflect on our seemingly willful ‘myopia about the future’ in the context of global warming.

“Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir: ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq War is largely about oil.’ ‘Politically inconvenient’ is another euphemism for denial.”

So, as another massive ice shelf melts in Antartica, let me report to you that my wife and I were most pleased to welcome the first Chuckawalla of spring this morning in Color Country. We spotted him in his usual place, a rock we have named, “Chuckalot.” We like Chuckawallas. They’re vegetarians too.