Now, one has to ask the question (Well okay, you don't have to, but if you didn't then there would be no need for this blog and I'd be out of work so please ask the question already. Did you? Good, moving on.), "Exactly why are 90% of all the news services preaching some sort of fear?" I mean, even news is a business and businesses are in business to make money, right? So why preach fear, death, destruction and Honey Boo Boo (Shudder)? Simple, because fear sells.
Humans have had a almost unhealthy fascination with fear, death and terror since...well since there were humans running around. We love having the pants scared off of us. We live for that adrenaline surge we get when we are convinced that things are about to hit the fan. Look at any year's list of movies. How many of them feature Zombies, Weresomethingoranothers, Vampires, Killer Shrews (I kid you not), Giant Killer Bunnies (also kidding you not), end of the world kind of plots? I betcha it is a significant number of them. Look at the current run of TV shows. We got Vampires, Killer Witches, Headless Horsemen (Well Man not men) and Walking Dead.
News agencies like Fox News, CNN and so many others depend on their advertisers the same way entertainment circles do. Advertisers only give away the green stuff when they can be sure that people are watching the shows that run their ads. So News Agencies go where they know the money is. No matter how much we might claim otherwise, on some subconscious level a huge number of us want to be scared. The more scared we get, the happier we are.
I think the scare stories being pushed by News Agencies are even more attractive to our addiction to fear because they have some basis in reality. Ebola is real and it does kill. Immigrants are flooding over our borders and "could" possibly harbor some hidden threat to the US besides taking the crappy jobs that no one else wants. Guns are dangerous and can put very large holes in people and lets face it, both segments of our One Party System of governance are scary as heck. (Although I might argue the real part on that one.) So because these things actually exist and could pose some threat to us, they are scarier.
I suppose that as long as we live to be frightened, our media sources will continue to put things on that are exaggerations or even out and out lies. I do question how wise it is for the powers that be to be feeding our addictions, but as long the junkies keep crying out for more we will keep being fed. I look forward to the next "Day of the Walking Ebola Immigrant Terrorist" episode.
End of Rant
