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Opening Arguments

If we say panic, panic!

Those of us in the media provide a valuable public service by warning people of things that could harm them. But sometimes we, er, overwarn. Remember the West Nile virus and all the stories in the local news about how scary things might get? Didn't exactly pan out, which would seem to require followups that the danger wasn't as great as forecast. But here's a story reporing the first death this year from the virus, a Minneapolis woman, in a year in which the disease has been exceedingly rare: only 15 cases so far. But the reporter just can't resist:

But the virus is showing up early this year. And as we enter the peak West Nile season, Tom Swedein, who planned to travel in his retirement, says: take the warnings seriously.

"It's devastating and people just don't realize it."

Posted in: Current Affairs

Comments

Bob G.
Mon, 07/24/2006 - 6:07am

...SO I'm not gonna sweat LYME disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever...(whew)...what a relief!

B.G.

Steve Towsley
Wed, 07/26/2006 - 9:34pm

Television news media is probably worse than print media on this score, for any number of unfortunate reasons. If you spent a lot of money on your ultra-weather computer, I suppose you fall victim to the temptation to justify its existence, to see every weather event as a drama.

This trap seems so obvious that I'm surprised we see so many repeat occurrences of the same mistakes by the same people.

But it's not just the media exaggerating things. We now have too-frequent tornado warning sirens -- warning sirens that sound when no tornado is bearing down on us.

Somebody should impress upon the city it's not a "tornado-watch-this-evening-for-Northeast-Indiana" siren, it's a TORNADO WARNING siren, universally understood to send one simple and vital message -- Take cover IMMEDIATELY 'cause we're in the path of the twister we've spotted heading your way!!

I'm reminded of one personal example of siren abuse, involving a girl delivering a pizza to my door last year just as one of these faux tornado sirens sounded -- luckily I had been watching the weather on television and knew the score.

The young girl arrived at my door wide-eyed and disturbed, fully intending to abandon the pizzas and huddle with me and my dog in a closet.

I explained to her that a general watch spanned several counties for the evening, that nobody claimed to know where a problem might develop, and that no funnel cloud had been identified anywhere near Fort Wayne, let alone any funnel that was poised to snatch her and her little car into oblivion if she didn't take cover in a strange man's townhouse.

She left looking confused and not entirely reassured, given the continued blaring of the lying siren. I wished her good luck, maybe not the best phrasing in that situation.

Every service organization, public or commercial, should take great pains to avoid and prohibit alerts which are exaggerated, misdirected, misleading, over-general, or speculative.

Scrupulousness in this area is not just for the public's benefit. No service entity can afford to lose credibility, and it doesn't take long for the public to tune out an unreliable source on any subject. Besides, no service group should be content to permit a community to waste its energies based on faulty information.

So whether we call this kind of thing overwarning, sensationalism, alarmism, bad policy, poor judgment, caution to a fault, paranoia, or the fabled crying of "Wolf!" the result is the same: A community conditioned to overwarning will be worse off than average in a genuine emergency.

Bob G.
Thu, 07/27/2006 - 4:40am

Siren?????
SIREN????
WHAT SIREN??????

Only siren(s) I EVER hear are the cops chasing & busting another person in my neighborhood, or the fire department trying to move idiots OUT of the way while getting to the next call....

B.G.

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