Post by Kahlessa on Jun 24, 2007 18:48:23 GMT -5
(I originally wrote this article for the Barnes & Noble online discussion of State of Fear in November 2005. I also posted it on the Crichton message board but it didn’t survive the recent purge.)
Apparently Michael Crichton had been thinking about the issue of media-hyped fear for some time prior to writing State of Fear. In an article “Panic in the Sheets” in the January 1988 issue of Playboy, he examines fears about AIDS. The article can be viewed on Crichton’s website:
www.michaelcrichton.com/essay-playboy-panicinthesheets.html
Crichton tells of dating a woman who says, ‘Heterosexuals can get it, too….All the newspaper and TV reports are so frightening.’
Ellen, a friend of Crichton’s asks, “You’re a doctor. Aren’t you worried about AIDS?’
[Crichton] ‘Not really,’ I say, ‘I’m not homosexual and I don’t inject drugs and I don’t have intimate friends who do. So, no, I’m not worried.’
[Ellen] ‘How can you be sure about your intimate friends?’
[Crichton] ‘You can’t be sure. You can only be careful.’
[Ellen] ‘But there is heterosexual transmission.’
[Crichton] ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But right now, your risk as a heterosexual of catching AIDS is roughly the same as your risk of catching rabies.’
She’s confused. [Ellen] ‘Rabies? Who cares about rabies?’
[Crichton] That, of course, is my point.”
Ellen continues to be concerned, saying, “I don’t see how you can be so casual. The rest of the world is terrified and you talk as if it were nothing at all.’
[Crichton] ‘I’m not casual. I’m very aware that AIDS is a tragic affliction for certain groups. But at this point, it’s not prevalent among heterosexuals.’
‘Not prevalent? They’re saying it’s a plague,’ Ellen says.
[Crichton] ‘Who’s saying?’
[Ellen] ‘Everybody. The papers. The news.’
Crichton writes:
A mass-media society offers its citizens many advantages, but accurate understanding of risk is not among them. The media must sell themselves, and they do so by overstatement. This is hardly news.”
In State of Fear, Professor Norman Hoffman said, “The media need scare stories to capture an audience.” (456, hardcover edition)
In “Panic in the Sheets”, Crichton goes on to observe:
“I begin to notice certain recurring features. The first is that everybody seems to be responding to the constant media focus on AIDS, rather than any specific information. Nobody ever quotes statistics. People are chiefly disturbed by the fact that AIDS is always on the network news; it’s everywhere you turn.”
In State of Fear, Peter Evans appears to base his beliefs about global warming on media reports:
“It’s hard to believe sea levels aren’t rising,” Evans said. “Everything you read says they are. All the television reports…”
[John] Kenner said, “Remember African killer bees? There was talk of them for years. They’re here now, and apparently there’s no problem. Remember Y2K? Everything you read back then said disaster was imminent. Went on for months. But in the end, it just wasn’t true.”
In retrospect it looks as though the media-hyped fear of heterosexual AIDS also wasn’t true, at least in America and Western Europe. In his book The Culture of Fear: Risk-Taking and the Morality of Low Expectations, Frank Furedi, says:
“The promotion of fear and the propagandist manipulation of information is often justified on the grounds that it is a small price to pay to get a good message across to the public….In other words, rather than provide people with the information to make an informed choice, everyone is warned that they are at risk. The refusal to make a distinction between people who are clearly at risk and those who are not has also been the hallmark of successive AIDS awareness campaigns. It is only recently, after almost a decade of campaigning, that the media have begun to acknowledge that AIDS is not a significant threat to heterosexuals.” (25-26, trade paper edition 2005)
Bernard Goldberg maintains that exaggerating the risk to heterosexuals was a strategic move by activists, with the cooperation of the media. In Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, in a chapter titled “Epidemic of Fear” Goldberg contends that the fact that AIDS was killing select groups of people wasn’t scary enough for the media:
“What if everyone who was having sex was playing Russian roulette? It was a nightmare scenario. And it was exactly the story that AIDS activists desperately wanted to put out. The goal was simple: scare the hell out of straight America—then they would to pay attention. Otherwise, the activists feared, there would never be a national outcry over AIDS. Middle America would never get worked up enough—and neither would Congress or the president—to spend whatever it took to combat this modern-day plague.” (76 hardcover edition 2001)
Goldberg maintains that media representations of AIDS victims were skewed to give mainstream America fears it could identify with. The percentage of heterosexuals who contracted AIDS who did not engage in high-risk behaviors or have sex with someone who did was very small—but they were overrepresented in the media. Goldberg tells of a 48 Hours segment “The Killer Next Door” which implied that everyone, even the white suburban middle class, was at risk for AIDS. (89-90).
But even though the risks of contracting AIDS may have been exaggerated, Crichton did not say that there wasn’t a problem or that people shouldn’t do anything about it. He tells of his frustration with a gay friend, Barry, who refuses to acknowledge the risk of AIDS or take any precautions:
“I can do what I want to,’ Barry says, ‘It’s a free country.’
[Crichton] I think, The only thing worse than blind panic is blind denial.”
He concludes “Panic in the Sheets” saying:
“It’s time to be compassionate but tough-minded, sensible but firm. Harsh realities must be faced. The disease must be stopped from spreading. Everybody’s lifestyle must change in response to this threat. This is not the time to misunderstand issues of life and death by casting them in the Sixties mold of civil rights or in the Seventies mold of sexual freedom. We’re in the Eighties, and AIDS is forcing us to change our thinking and our conduct, whether we like it or not.
But blind panic and unreasoning terror won’t help us make this change. It is time to drop the panic, to inform ourselves about the facts and to transform our own lives appropriately and wisely.”
In the same way, Crichton does not say that there isn’t a problem with the environment or that people shouldn’t do anything about it. In State of Fear there is this exchange between Kenner and Ted Bradley:
So what exactly is your point?” Bradley said. “You’re saying that we don’t need to pay any attention to the environment, that we can just leave it alone and let industry pollute and everything will be hunky-dory?”
For a moment, it looked to Sarah as if Kenner would get angry, but he did not. He said, “If you oppose the death penalty, does it also mean you are in favor of doing nothing at all about crime?”
“No,” Ted said.
“You can oppose the death penalty but still favor punishing criminals.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then I can say that global warning is not a threat, but still favor environmental controls, can’t I?” (426-427)
Crichton clarifies his own position during his testimony in the Senate hearing on September 28, 2005:
“In closing, I want to state emphatically that nothing in my remarks should be taken to imply that we can ignore our environment, or that we should not take climate change seriously. On the contrary, we must dramatically improve our record on environmental management. That's why a focused effort on climate science, aimed at securing sound, independently verified answers to policy questions, is so important now.”
In “Panic in the Sheets”, Crichton’s concerns about the media-hyped fears of AIDS mirror the concerns he show about the media-hyped fears about the environment in State of Fear.
And here is Crichton’s response to my essay that he posted on November 22:
I'd forgotten that piece. It created a huge stir at the time, although it was essentially correct in arguing for a more accurate approach to the problem. And that accuracy never really happened. Those activists who wanted to deal realistically with the disease risk were shouted down. What ultimately cooled the issue, at least in the US, was the advent of successful drug treatments.
Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Africa, the unwillingness to address the disease honestly has been devastating and tragic.
Apparently Michael Crichton had been thinking about the issue of media-hyped fear for some time prior to writing State of Fear. In an article “Panic in the Sheets” in the January 1988 issue of Playboy, he examines fears about AIDS. The article can be viewed on Crichton’s website:
www.michaelcrichton.com/essay-playboy-panicinthesheets.html
Crichton tells of dating a woman who says, ‘Heterosexuals can get it, too….All the newspaper and TV reports are so frightening.’
Ellen, a friend of Crichton’s asks, “You’re a doctor. Aren’t you worried about AIDS?’
[Crichton] ‘Not really,’ I say, ‘I’m not homosexual and I don’t inject drugs and I don’t have intimate friends who do. So, no, I’m not worried.’
[Ellen] ‘How can you be sure about your intimate friends?’
[Crichton] ‘You can’t be sure. You can only be careful.’
[Ellen] ‘But there is heterosexual transmission.’
[Crichton] ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But right now, your risk as a heterosexual of catching AIDS is roughly the same as your risk of catching rabies.’
She’s confused. [Ellen] ‘Rabies? Who cares about rabies?’
[Crichton] That, of course, is my point.”
Ellen continues to be concerned, saying, “I don’t see how you can be so casual. The rest of the world is terrified and you talk as if it were nothing at all.’
[Crichton] ‘I’m not casual. I’m very aware that AIDS is a tragic affliction for certain groups. But at this point, it’s not prevalent among heterosexuals.’
‘Not prevalent? They’re saying it’s a plague,’ Ellen says.
[Crichton] ‘Who’s saying?’
[Ellen] ‘Everybody. The papers. The news.’
Crichton writes:
A mass-media society offers its citizens many advantages, but accurate understanding of risk is not among them. The media must sell themselves, and they do so by overstatement. This is hardly news.”
In State of Fear, Professor Norman Hoffman said, “The media need scare stories to capture an audience.” (456, hardcover edition)
In “Panic in the Sheets”, Crichton goes on to observe:
“I begin to notice certain recurring features. The first is that everybody seems to be responding to the constant media focus on AIDS, rather than any specific information. Nobody ever quotes statistics. People are chiefly disturbed by the fact that AIDS is always on the network news; it’s everywhere you turn.”
In State of Fear, Peter Evans appears to base his beliefs about global warming on media reports:
“It’s hard to believe sea levels aren’t rising,” Evans said. “Everything you read says they are. All the television reports…”
[John] Kenner said, “Remember African killer bees? There was talk of them for years. They’re here now, and apparently there’s no problem. Remember Y2K? Everything you read back then said disaster was imminent. Went on for months. But in the end, it just wasn’t true.”
In retrospect it looks as though the media-hyped fear of heterosexual AIDS also wasn’t true, at least in America and Western Europe. In his book The Culture of Fear: Risk-Taking and the Morality of Low Expectations, Frank Furedi, says:
“The promotion of fear and the propagandist manipulation of information is often justified on the grounds that it is a small price to pay to get a good message across to the public….In other words, rather than provide people with the information to make an informed choice, everyone is warned that they are at risk. The refusal to make a distinction between people who are clearly at risk and those who are not has also been the hallmark of successive AIDS awareness campaigns. It is only recently, after almost a decade of campaigning, that the media have begun to acknowledge that AIDS is not a significant threat to heterosexuals.” (25-26, trade paper edition 2005)
Bernard Goldberg maintains that exaggerating the risk to heterosexuals was a strategic move by activists, with the cooperation of the media. In Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, in a chapter titled “Epidemic of Fear” Goldberg contends that the fact that AIDS was killing select groups of people wasn’t scary enough for the media:
“What if everyone who was having sex was playing Russian roulette? It was a nightmare scenario. And it was exactly the story that AIDS activists desperately wanted to put out. The goal was simple: scare the hell out of straight America—then they would to pay attention. Otherwise, the activists feared, there would never be a national outcry over AIDS. Middle America would never get worked up enough—and neither would Congress or the president—to spend whatever it took to combat this modern-day plague.” (76 hardcover edition 2001)
Goldberg maintains that media representations of AIDS victims were skewed to give mainstream America fears it could identify with. The percentage of heterosexuals who contracted AIDS who did not engage in high-risk behaviors or have sex with someone who did was very small—but they were overrepresented in the media. Goldberg tells of a 48 Hours segment “The Killer Next Door” which implied that everyone, even the white suburban middle class, was at risk for AIDS. (89-90).
But even though the risks of contracting AIDS may have been exaggerated, Crichton did not say that there wasn’t a problem or that people shouldn’t do anything about it. He tells of his frustration with a gay friend, Barry, who refuses to acknowledge the risk of AIDS or take any precautions:
“I can do what I want to,’ Barry says, ‘It’s a free country.’
[Crichton] I think, The only thing worse than blind panic is blind denial.”
He concludes “Panic in the Sheets” saying:
“It’s time to be compassionate but tough-minded, sensible but firm. Harsh realities must be faced. The disease must be stopped from spreading. Everybody’s lifestyle must change in response to this threat. This is not the time to misunderstand issues of life and death by casting them in the Sixties mold of civil rights or in the Seventies mold of sexual freedom. We’re in the Eighties, and AIDS is forcing us to change our thinking and our conduct, whether we like it or not.
But blind panic and unreasoning terror won’t help us make this change. It is time to drop the panic, to inform ourselves about the facts and to transform our own lives appropriately and wisely.”
In the same way, Crichton does not say that there isn’t a problem with the environment or that people shouldn’t do anything about it. In State of Fear there is this exchange between Kenner and Ted Bradley:
So what exactly is your point?” Bradley said. “You’re saying that we don’t need to pay any attention to the environment, that we can just leave it alone and let industry pollute and everything will be hunky-dory?”
For a moment, it looked to Sarah as if Kenner would get angry, but he did not. He said, “If you oppose the death penalty, does it also mean you are in favor of doing nothing at all about crime?”
“No,” Ted said.
“You can oppose the death penalty but still favor punishing criminals.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then I can say that global warning is not a threat, but still favor environmental controls, can’t I?” (426-427)
Crichton clarifies his own position during his testimony in the Senate hearing on September 28, 2005:
“In closing, I want to state emphatically that nothing in my remarks should be taken to imply that we can ignore our environment, or that we should not take climate change seriously. On the contrary, we must dramatically improve our record on environmental management. That's why a focused effort on climate science, aimed at securing sound, independently verified answers to policy questions, is so important now.”
In “Panic in the Sheets”, Crichton’s concerns about the media-hyped fears of AIDS mirror the concerns he show about the media-hyped fears about the environment in State of Fear.
And here is Crichton’s response to my essay that he posted on November 22:
I'd forgotten that piece. It created a huge stir at the time, although it was essentially correct in arguing for a more accurate approach to the problem. And that accuracy never really happened. Those activists who wanted to deal realistically with the disease risk were shouted down. What ultimately cooled the issue, at least in the US, was the advent of successful drug treatments.
Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Africa, the unwillingness to address the disease honestly has been devastating and tragic.
