Media Focus: Irrational Fears, the Sensational | The Big Picture

I'm less interested in the media bias slant then I am in the cold hard facts of what can kill us:

But it turns out that relative to the coverage, the reality is quite different.The media covers issues that are exciting, sensationalistic or have good visuals. This leads them to present a very different view of the world, one that does not conform very closely to reality.

For example: Automobiles are a far larger cause of death than homicides. The way deaths are portrayed on the news is hardly proportionate.

Dramatic television is even worse. CSI: Miami is far more exciting than CSI: Someone ran a red light and the ensuing accident left 2 injured, one dead. Yet auto deaths far outnumber homicides.

Even within accidental deaths, there are approximately twice as many Suicides as there are Homicides. Not that an American watcher of TV would ever know that. Murder, She Wrote has far more intrigue and drama, and is probably a whole lot more watchable, than “A painful incurable disease of an elderly person led to a suicide, She Wrote.”