Dramatic risks…
We live in wonderful times–for some people, anyway. If you make a livable wage, eat well, drink moderately, avoid smoking, avoid dangerous recreational activities, exercise, get married, engage in “meaningful” work, and drive (a heavy vehicle) defensively, then the chances are pretty good that you will live a long life.
If, however, you do the opposite, you’re toast.
In any case, your chances of being killed by an act of violence, being infected by HIV, catching SARS or West Nile virus or anthrax are very low. Yet these make the headlines. Why? Because the fact that, for example, hundreds of thousands die in this country every year from smoking related illnesses is not news. Why? Here’s what Dr. Philip Harrison, a senior medical officer with the Medical Research Council in the UK says:
“Journalists don’t ask ‘What is the truth?’ They ask ‘What is the story–how can we make this excite or disturb someone?’ That is very different and, although I appreciate that they are doing their job, I do wish that it didn’t have to be this way.”
Yes and no. The narrative bias of journalism certainly applies here. So, simplistically, Dr. Harrison is correct. The narrative bias is structural, i.e. it is one of the biases that structures journalistic practice. So it cannot be argued or wished away.
Further, these biases structure more than practice; these biases also structure truth–what constitutes truth and how it may be presented. The narrative bias makes it nearly impossible to report, for example, the daily carnage of smoking because this situation has become completely normal and, therefore, completely undramatic. Journalists do not report that X number of people died of smoking today for exactly the same reasons they do not report how many flights took off successfully from the local airport.
The narrative bias makes it difficult, then, to report proportion in a realistic way. West Nile virus becomes a lot less scary and interesting once you realize your true chances of getting it compared to dying of heart disease if you don’t exercise.
Proportion eliminates drama; lack of drama eliminates attention.
