At a recent dinner party, conversation turned abruptly to crime — and the alarming claim by one guest that rape was skyrocketing in New York City’s parks. This drew a pause from the rest of the table, not so much to dwell on the horror but to wonder whether it was really true. The host — whose apartment borders a large park — asked, “What increase in rapes?”
“Well, I seem to read every day in the paper about rapes happening in parks,” said the guest. Now, I should add that both the host and the guest were women, and nothing about even a single rape is trivial or should be minimized. But there was another salient point, and it was quickly articulated by a journalist from a prominent newspaper seated opposite: “It is,” he said, “the job of journalists to frighten you!” His wife, also a journalist, added, “you have to look at the statistics.”
Which of course… um, where was I? Oh yes, crossing the border into snoozeville. The statistical context is that there has, in fact, been a small uptick in the number of rapes in New York City this year — a 3 percent increase on the previous year as of the end of November. But we are still at a significant historical low as judged by the numbers of a decade ago (and doing even better than the 1990s).
Of course, it’s a given that reported rape almost certainly underestimates the true scale of the crime. But nothing suggests that parks are suddenly the new go-to spot for rapists. I suspect that the much-reported incident of a rape at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park simply created the impression of a verdant trend by virtue of the words “park” and “rape” being mentioned so often.
The problem is that while the news media constantly rattles on about its own vital importance in a functioning democracy, news rarely has the measured reassurance of a statistical abstract. As the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once observed, drama is as essential to journalism as it is to theater, and the theater of news is as filled with carnage, chaos and corruption as any play by Shakespeare. Though, obviously, there’s a lot more sex and the words are simpler.
The public, of course, instinctively know that if it bleeds, it leads. In fact, if I were to judge from the number of times this year I have been told that the news agenda is consciously manipulated to frighten the public in order to sell papers, I’d say the public is far more cynical about how bad news is “constructed” than they probably should be. Sometimes the lead bleeds because you need to know how bad things really are.
But the dilemma for the public is similar to that faced by Macbeth, who’s stepped so far into a river of blood as to be unable to step back. Indeed, I suspect that if every news outlet in the U.S. were to run nothing but positive news for a week, the public would cry conspiracy, and assume a propaganda campaign run by the White House.
Which is why we need to treat news as if it were no different than booze, with moderate consumption being as good for the head as moderate drinking is for the heart. Too much, however, and you become a menace to yourself and the world, constantly fretting about imaginary threats and all encompassing conspiracies.
This danger applies even more to journalists. Whereas barmen are supposed to stay sober on the job and cut customers off before they keel over, bad news is treated as always being good for you. Journalists lap it up and serve it day in, day out.
Indeed, driven by the belief that they need to patrol the borders of truth and fiction with an ever-vigilant skepticism, it becomes difficult to see what doesn’t fit.
This problem has been identified as the “availability heuristic,” and it gets passed on to the public. As Daniel Kahneman explains in his new blockbuster, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” “people tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease which they are retrieved from memory — and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media.” And then, because drama excites the public, the media responds by giving them more drama — until we’re all primed to see the worst and optimism becomes cowardice.
And this is why celebrity trivia, fashion, gardening, luxury goods, travel, dining, automotive and all the other soft news do not trivialize the human condition, or narcotize us from revolutionary politics (as Noam Chomsky might argue); they are, instead, vital — absolutely vital — cathartic moments in the never-ending ring cycle of bad news.
The funniest quote from 2011? As recounted to the New York Times, David Mamet goes to a consultant who asks the playwright, “You want to make your life better?’” and Mamet says, “Yeah, sure.” The advice he received? “Stop drinking and don’t read the newspapers.”
That’s a bit drastic: we don’t want to ban the Times as if it were the literary equivalent of trans fats or tax the Wall Street Journal as if it were soda. We just need to remember that too much journalism can be bad for mental health — and learn how to control our intake, whether through the sheer plod of statistics or the shiny baubles of luxury.
“Well, I seem to read every day in the paper about rapes happening in parks,” said the guest. Now, I should add that both the host and the guest were women, and nothing about even a single rape is trivial or should be minimized. But there was another salient point, and it was quickly articulated by a journalist from a prominent newspaper seated opposite: “It is,” he said, “the job of journalists to frighten you!” His wife, also a journalist, added, “you have to look at the statistics.”
Which of course… um, where was I? Oh yes, crossing the border into snoozeville. The statistical context is that there has, in fact, been a small uptick in the number of rapes in New York City this year — a 3 percent increase on the previous year as of the end of November. But we are still at a significant historical low as judged by the numbers of a decade ago (and doing even better than the 1990s).
Of course, it’s a given that reported rape almost certainly underestimates the true scale of the crime. But nothing suggests that parks are suddenly the new go-to spot for rapists. I suspect that the much-reported incident of a rape at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park simply created the impression of a verdant trend by virtue of the words “park” and “rape” being mentioned so often.
The problem is that while the news media constantly rattles on about its own vital importance in a functioning democracy, news rarely has the measured reassurance of a statistical abstract. As the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once observed, drama is as essential to journalism as it is to theater, and the theater of news is as filled with carnage, chaos and corruption as any play by Shakespeare. Though, obviously, there’s a lot more sex and the words are simpler.
The public, of course, instinctively know that if it bleeds, it leads. In fact, if I were to judge from the number of times this year I have been told that the news agenda is consciously manipulated to frighten the public in order to sell papers, I’d say the public is far more cynical about how bad news is “constructed” than they probably should be. Sometimes the lead bleeds because you need to know how bad things really are.
But the dilemma for the public is similar to that faced by Macbeth, who’s stepped so far into a river of blood as to be unable to step back. Indeed, I suspect that if every news outlet in the U.S. were to run nothing but positive news for a week, the public would cry conspiracy, and assume a propaganda campaign run by the White House.
Which is why we need to treat news as if it were no different than booze, with moderate consumption being as good for the head as moderate drinking is for the heart. Too much, however, and you become a menace to yourself and the world, constantly fretting about imaginary threats and all encompassing conspiracies.
This danger applies even more to journalists. Whereas barmen are supposed to stay sober on the job and cut customers off before they keel over, bad news is treated as always being good for you. Journalists lap it up and serve it day in, day out.
Indeed, driven by the belief that they need to patrol the borders of truth and fiction with an ever-vigilant skepticism, it becomes difficult to see what doesn’t fit.
This problem has been identified as the “availability heuristic,” and it gets passed on to the public. As Daniel Kahneman explains in his new blockbuster, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” “people tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease which they are retrieved from memory — and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media.” And then, because drama excites the public, the media responds by giving them more drama — until we’re all primed to see the worst and optimism becomes cowardice.
And this is why celebrity trivia, fashion, gardening, luxury goods, travel, dining, automotive and all the other soft news do not trivialize the human condition, or narcotize us from revolutionary politics (as Noam Chomsky might argue); they are, instead, vital — absolutely vital — cathartic moments in the never-ending ring cycle of bad news.
The funniest quote from 2011? As recounted to the New York Times, David Mamet goes to a consultant who asks the playwright, “You want to make your life better?’” and Mamet says, “Yeah, sure.” The advice he received? “Stop drinking and don’t read the newspapers.”
That’s a bit drastic: we don’t want to ban the Times as if it were the literary equivalent of trans fats or tax the Wall Street Journal as if it were soda. We just need to remember that too much journalism can be bad for mental health — and learn how to control our intake, whether through the sheer plod of statistics or the shiny baubles of luxury.