June 8th, 2009
This is really just a quick addendum to my June 2nd, 2009 rant.
It's my view of the Scare-Mongering Beast from the inside (as a junior):
I "reported" (I use that term most loosely) for CJIV radio when I was in university. The entire culture there among the other few newsy people was one of trying to get the listeners' attention. Fear was the most effective way: Whether true or not, we banked on people just not being interested in feel-good stories, open honest (read: boring) reporting on facts ... we all competed with each other to find the most frightening or farthest-reaching repercussions in any story.
Oh, I'm not saying that we all sat down, severally or communally, and decided that we were going to try to scare the crap out of people ... but, like most social movements, that is just the way it happened.
And I was no different, of course. For example, at the time I was "reporting", McDonald's restaurants were switching from styrofoam packaging for their larger hamburgers to cardboard containers. They were personally touting this as an effective way to save costs while simultaneously helping the environment. Well, I remember writing up my report from the angle of how much paper resources would be wasted by packaging Big Macs, etc. in cardboard. I also managed to turn it into a condemnation of peoples' eating habits WRT to the quantity of fast food we consume.
Good grief, that was 23 years ago, and I see that nothing at all has changed! My excuse was that I was a 2nd-year university student. What's the "real" reporters' excuses?
There are none. Scaring people is the currency that most news agencies seem to trade on.
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