(This piece contains many references to the 3 largest American news networks, but my intention is for people from any country to gain a better insight into what drives your most trusted source of news, and when to take what they say with a grain of salt.) Every three months, a new season starts. Every four years, February tacks on a 29th day. And like clockwork, every couple of years, some familiar disease that has sat within a region’s population for decades flares up bigger than usual, and the hacks on TV news coverage get primed to spread as much confusing and conflicting information as possible. When I watch TV news, I have too great a tendency to give factual authority to the pundit I see talking behind his or her desk. Their problems become my own, and so do their solutions. And when someone disagrees with them, I can clearly see that my side is the winning side. Too rarely do I think inwardly about what effect these remote issues have on my own worldview. For example: When the Ebola scare broke in June, I listened intently to interpretations of the facts coming in from all sides. FOX News (America’s highly conservative and most controversial news network) served up their patented narrative of how we’re all about to die (again) and it’s all Obama’s fault (again). I was ready to look to our left-of-center network, NBC--or to CNN, the guys who always stand back and “weigh both sides,”--to inform my opinion instead. Somewhere along the way, I learned that the best way to develop my own “informed opinion” was to look for and consider the facts for myself. The lesson probably began when I noticed how NBC’s and CNN’s programming, though distinct from the message over at FOX, still made me feel inexplicably afraid of Ebola — a virus which I’m told every qualified doctor in America is relentlessly looking for, and which the four people who’ve carried it into the United States since the outbreak all have their names and addresses written in millions of newspapers. I was being told that, although it could only be transmitted by direct bodily fluid contact (such as getting vomit on your fingers and then not washing your hands before you eat), it is still spreading to more and more people in western Africa, including to the many American and European medical personnel treating it. I learned that, although it is in theory not prone to large outbreaks due to its difficulty to transmit, this year has seen it spread faster and farther “than ever before.” I was told that this is why more and more medical personnel are being sent into Sierra Leone and Liberia: to maintain a quarantine, research, and eradicate the virus. And yet, although I was being told that everything was under control, I couldn’t help but notice the subtle implication that Ebola is something that I should be worried about. Every few weeks, a sudden scare of Ebola outbreak seems to flare up from nowhere, be it in Atlanta, Texas, or New York City. Only the major TV news networks have the capacity to keep the entire country up-to-speed on these matters, yet the majority of the “Ebola sightings” in the US that made their way into the headlines turned out to be nothing at all. If I were to say to you: “Just so you know, there’s gonna be a fireworks show downtown tonight, but don’t be afraid,” that’s already a suspicious way to broach a benign subject. If I then add “also, one of those fireworks could in theory misfire, navigate across town to your bedroom window and kill you--but it probably won’t,” you would look at me very strangely. But stop me here: Why do I use fireworks — harmless, distant, mildly annoying at worst — as an analogy for a disease which has killed thousands of people? No matter how great a phobia I appear to have against fireworks, I can’t possibly convince you it will do you any harm, but things as remote as Ebola move much more freely through the realm of what-ifs. When I jump up and down and shout “the sky is falling,” you can simply look up at the familiar blue sky, see it’s not so, and go about your day. But when experts on television to whom you can’t directly ask questions are talking about an issue you know nothing about, looking for the right logic on which to base your reaction is difficult. To top that, you’re attacked day in and day out by poll numbers and complicated graphics and emotionally charged accusations, all of which only makes you invest more of yourself mentally while never even leaving the realm of speculation. Suddenly, no matter what the TV is telling you, all you can tell yourself for certain is that no one knows anymore whether the sky is falling or not. So let’s take a quick glance upwards and check, shall we? A recent infographic* published by National Geographic places the current Ebola outbreak next to outbreaks of various other diseases — some recent, and some historical. *For the sake of authenticity, as of the day of this writing, the total number of reported deaths from Ebola this year is 4,951, slightly higher than the 4,877 listed in the graphic. Unless you’re well-read on viral outbreaks of the last decade, Ebola probably has the smallest death rate by far of any disease on that list which you’ve heard of. What’s more, according to the graphic, it would seem Haiti has been in the midst of an epidemic of Cholera for the last three years, which has killed even more people than Ebola has in Africa. Why aren’t there measures in place to ensure people returning from Haiti don’t bring Cholera back with them? Worthy of note on the graphic is the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009, which most Americans can recall as the last time the media focused so much of their (and their viewers’) attention on a disease which ultimately died. The difference seems to be that Swine Flu killed over 280,000 people in a single year — a much higher number far more deserving of the level of controversy it spawned in that year, in contrast to Ebola this year. But, according to the WHO, that’s still not as much as the highest estimates of seasonal flu deaths (250,000 to 500,000) which occur every year around the world. Why doesn’t CNN remind us to get our flu shots instead of speculating on Ebola? The flu is something the media can’t make us worry about. It’s already familiar to us; we know how it feels to have the flu around, and so when someone tells us “the flu killed half a million people last year,” it doesn’t make us afraid to go outside. So why do four isolated cases of Ebola scare Americans so much, when HIV — a disease which spreads in exactly the same fashion as Ebola, but is far more difficult to detect and infects over 50,000 Americans a year — does not? Are we supposed to be afraid of every chance occurrence that threatens us in our daily lives? Do I avoid crossing big streets because 5,000 pedestrians were killed by motorists in 2012, and 75,000 were injured? Do I avoid socializing with people because there were 14,748 homicides in 2010? Of course not. While those numbers are tragic, if I were to alter my routine because of them, I would be letting things that are not my immediate concern affect my response to the things that are. I have no reason to suspect that anyone I encounter in my day wants to kill me; to assume that they do would be unfair, and would restrict my freedom to interact with them as I normally would. Until Ebola goes airborne and waterborne and rides horses into battle, the only thing about it that affects my life in this moment is that it gives me something to write about — for which, I suppose, I should be more grateful to NBC, CNN, and FOX. Their subtle yet many misdirections ultimately lead me to understand precisely where they’re coming from. Like me, major news networks also need something to write about. When a local epidemic in a remote country sparks quarantines, they’ve found their something. After that, it goes against their interest to let us forget about it in the same way that we forgot about AIDS in America or Cholera in Haiti. NBC will continually repeat the message of “you won’t catch Ebola, and we’re gonna stay vigilant in case that changes;” to make us think they’ve got our best interests at heart. CNN will say things like, “Ebola probably won’t come to your neighborhood, but if it does, here’s what you should do,” to make us confide in them and their predictions. But it’s obvious that if either of them really wanted to push the point that we’re all safe from Ebola, neither of those stances would be necessary. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what they write, so long as they can keep your attention — and with how American media has evolved in the last decade, the top three networks each know how to do that in unique, almost artistic style. FOX is shockingly forward in their sensationalism, sticking to their innovative method of using flimsy, decontextualized quotes to spin some terrifying fairy tale from hell. That’s not an Onion article making fun of FOX; people do read that, and they do nod their heads. Fighting the fires of sensationalism with a splash of cold, fresh facts, NBC News steps up to the plate. Theirs is an appeal to those grasping for a more optimistic outlook, though not without some suspense. Don’t worry, they’ll say: the experts are here, and they know what they’re doing. Look at how those trained doctors protect us all from Ebola. Looks complicated, dunnit? They must be so smart, and so well trained! And while we can all be grateful the doctors don’t often spill infected blood in their eyes, is this information really helpful for all Americans, or is it actually harmful? Are we supposed to think that our wellbeing as a nation hinges on such tiny, unreliable details as how a doctor puts on his lab coat? What if I wrote a piece about how food industry workers always wash their hands very thoroughly, and I said “this is the reason that you and I don’t have dysentery” — would that make you feel safe? Nevertheless, NBC continues to ride high as the most trusted source of “stay calms”. Finally, there’s CNN, the ever neutral voice of pure, distilled, 100% objectivity, who love to end headlines with question marks — Or Do They? You Decide. NBC’s suspicious level of confidence and FOX’s Ebolageddon 2014 world leave a sizeable gap to fill, and CNN fits quite snug in the middle no matter what they say. The only rule of centrism is never to say anyone’s right. As long as that’s your mantra, you’re free: Validate the fears. Give out every detail about who does or doesn’t have the virus. And when that isn’t enough: Speculate, speculate, speculate. If FOX is the only one overtly trying to scare us, why does it seem like NBC and CNN do such an organically good job of it as well? Saying “Stay tuned in case the sky starts falling” is not the same as saying “No, the sky is not falling.” Yes, two doctors with Ebola, a disease which everybody agrees is practically impossible to transmit when the only people around you are intelligent wearers of lab coats, were brought to a facility in Atlanta to be given an experimental cure — and it worked. Shouldn’t we as a nation be celebrating that, rather than accusing the government of carelessness, fearing what “might have happened” if the infected doctors had instead chosen to run into the street and vomit on pedestrians? Yes, a man coming from Liberia lied about his symptoms and returned home sick; he was taken to the hospital. Is this reason to be paranoid and say that our restrictions on travel are too lax? How do you discern whether someone is sick or not without forcing him and every other American coming back from abroad into mandatory health screenings? Are we in fact suggesting that’s something we should do? When President Obama said in a speech that reactions to Ebola should be guided by “facts, not fear,” this quote surfaced in dozens of small online news outlets, but was conspicuously absent from any work, written or otherwise, by the top networks. Whether a network speaks for the right, left, or center, their personal agenda is always independent from their politics, and from the interests of the viewer. All too often, that agenda means not giving the people a fair assessment. If we can’t trust those who hold an oligarchy of mass media to deliver the news responsibly, the duty falls on us to do our own research, and think critically for ourselves about what we find. And whatever you think of the Ebola scare, remember in your hearts what the pundits will never remind you of. Five thousand people dying of a disease you almost certainly won’t catch may not be the scariest thing in this world after all, but it is still a tragedy. Each one of those people left a life behind them, and each one who gets sick does not suddenly become defined by his or her sickness. When you hear about someone coming ill with Ebola, resist the urge to jump towards fear for your own safety. If what we fear about Ebola is its capacity to kill, then it’s on us to work towards a society where those lost lives aren’t reduced to figures and fear mongering at the whims of talking heads — because whenever a writer turns a dying man or woman into a biohazard Ebola's not the one taking away a life. This article was written by Michael Margaritoff. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: David Uberti, Columbia Journalism Review