State of Fear

The recent swine flu pandemic and the way the media is presenting it to us reminds me of the book "State of Fear" written By Michael Crichton. In this book, Crichton talks about the "ways of the media", of how they like to keep the public in a perpetual "state of fear" and about the motives of the media for doing so.

He talks about how, despite the drop in crime rate in the US, the general public, due to media, perceived a rise in crime rate and were much more scared than ever. He picked on the controversial issue of global warming, contending that the warming and cooling of the earth are normal phenomenon happening over centuries having nothing to do with human activity; with media focusing only on parts of the truth thereby keeping the public in a "state of fear".

Our Indian media seems to be doing the same now. When I was in the US last month, the number of swine flu cases there surpassed a million. Per capita, this is much higher that what we have here in India now and from what I gather, even the fatality rate for swine flu is just about the same as that of the normal seasonal flu that strikes every year. Even worse, about a thousand people in India die every day of TB, which is as contagious and can be fatal. But our media has found something new....to keep us in a "state of fear".