A Little Perspective Please
Am I the only one who thinks the media has lost their ability to put things into perspective?
I’m speaking, in particular, about bad news stories.
A plane crashes in Kentucky and the media overwhelms the airwaves and Internet with more information than we need and we all are transformed into amateur pilots. How could this have happened? What was the pilot thinking? Did you know I’ve actually flown on one of those types of planes before? Did you hear there were newlyweds on the plane? Is air travel safe? Should I be afraid to fly out of a small airport?
We gather around the water cooler, exhaust ourselves for a few days with opinion and blather and then the story fades into the ether; to be forgotten until a year from now when the NTSB issues its report on the accident. But, what we fail to do, what the media fails to do, is frame the crash within its proper context.
Air travel, statistically speaking, is one of the safest ways to travel. You DO have a much greater chance of being killed on your way to work, the supermarket, or the airport for that matter, than you do of ever checking out in a plane crash. Morbid, but true.
The instantaneous flow of information these days, most would agree, is a good thing in many respects. TV, radio, the Internet. They all allow us to connect and receive information in ways that would never have been imagined even 10 years ago.
But, please. The next time you read one of those stories, dig a little deeper and see if the media is really framing it properly. I think we’d all be amazed at what we’d find.
I’m speaking, in particular, about bad news stories.
A plane crashes in Kentucky and the media overwhelms the airwaves and Internet with more information than we need and we all are transformed into amateur pilots. How could this have happened? What was the pilot thinking? Did you know I’ve actually flown on one of those types of planes before? Did you hear there were newlyweds on the plane? Is air travel safe? Should I be afraid to fly out of a small airport?
We gather around the water cooler, exhaust ourselves for a few days with opinion and blather and then the story fades into the ether; to be forgotten until a year from now when the NTSB issues its report on the accident. But, what we fail to do, what the media fails to do, is frame the crash within its proper context.
Air travel, statistically speaking, is one of the safest ways to travel. You DO have a much greater chance of being killed on your way to work, the supermarket, or the airport for that matter, than you do of ever checking out in a plane crash. Morbid, but true.
The instantaneous flow of information these days, most would agree, is a good thing in many respects. TV, radio, the Internet. They all allow us to connect and receive information in ways that would never have been imagined even 10 years ago.
But, please. The next time you read one of those stories, dig a little deeper and see if the media is really framing it properly. I think we’d all be amazed at what we’d find.
posted by W.S. Wuori at 1:22 PM
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