Bamboozled

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous." - Carl Sagan

I shouldn't be surprised that I'm feeling a little bamboozled lately after reading various reports about the realities of crime and child abduction in this country.

After all, I have long recognized that America's mass media thrives upon the Culture of Fear that it helped to create. But still, when it comes to the safety of children, I've been first in line to sound the alarm and spread the word about caution and awareness.

So now I learn that out of the roughly 800,000 kids that go missing in this country each year, the FBI estimates that only 100 to 200 of them are victims of the most serious type of non-family abductions, news of which fills parents with dread and distrust toward any stranger who looks twice at their children.

Better yet, violent crime in our country is at an all-time low and has been on a steady decline for the past thirty years. But you won't see that in the headlines. TV and newspapers seem to be only interested in scaring us, rather than informing us of the real level of risk. And why would they want to do that?

Mark, over at the Families & Technology blog theorizes that maintaining a certain level of fear and anxiety is good for corporate profits. Because behind every good newspaper, magazine, and TV station is a corporation that has something it wants to sell that will make us feel better about stepping out our front door into that great big scary world.

Dick Meyer, at CBSNews.com writes that the media is only giving the people what they want. He offers several theories as to why viewers are fascinated with stories of missing, murdered or abused children, including the idea that busy parents who shuttle their kids from one organized activity to another may actually turn to these horrible news reports to comfort and allay their own feelings of guilt over losing control of their own children.

Whatever the explanation, it certainly seems to be a vicious circle of corporate marketers, mass media, and viewers/readers. I don't believe those first two entities are willing to accurately analyze and report the reality of our world, so it's up to the audience, especially parents, to refuse to be bamboozled. The first step is to stop watching TV news, the worst offenders of exaggerating the incidence of child abductions. After that, find news organizations that deal in facts and figures. Become more optimistic and seek out the truth about the world around you. It's not such a bad place.