Of course government officials can’t grab the media megaphone if the media themselves don’t make it available. The mass media tend to magnify the latest health concern and broadcast it to millions of people at once. This has the effect of elevating an issue to a grand scale and provoking panic way out of proportion to the risks. I call this phenomenon the “bug du jour”. . . Many of the bugs du jour are cause for concern only among narrow segment of the population. Only a small portion of those who believe they are at risk really are, and few who become infected actually die. But a strange disease that kills only a few people still makes for good headlines if the story is strategically hyped.
Marc Siegel, False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear (pp. 17, 19)
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