As media pounce, the public loses perspective

My office reverie was broken the other day by "Breaking News" on CNN: A man in California named David Westerfield had been convicted of murdering a neighborhood girl named Danielle van Dam.

Readers should understood that, in the bureau where I work, every desk (including mine) is outfitted with a television. So, as the afternoon wore on, CNN's familiar "Breaking News" logo was seen in multiple, flickering images as the network stuck to the story. There were scenes from Westerfield's trial, videotapes of Danielle, talking heads, shots of the victim's family, views of the crush of reporters outside the courthouse

By the time I left for home, in the late afternoon, Westerfield remained convicted, and that "Breaking News" was still the only story on the Cable News Network.

I do not mean to minimize the horror of Westerfield's crime, or dismiss the tragedy of Danielle's truncated life. But it is worth wondering why, in the midst of a war on terrorism and prospective invasion of Iraq, the television news should be transfixed by a single murder trial in San Diego. The answer, of course, is that this is the Summer of Girl Abductions.

I am confident that producers and editors don't gather at some resort in the Poconos to plan each seasonal scandal, but there is a certain rhythm to the process. CNN, to take one example, has not just provided gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Westerfield trial, but focused relentless attention on the killings of Miranda Gaddis and Ashley Pond in Oregon, the abduction of Elizabeth Smart in Utah and the disappearance of Jennifer Short in Virginia, whose parents were killed.

Nor is the epidemic confined to TV. People magazine's cover recently featured Jacqueline Marris and Tamara Brooks, "two courageous California teens (who) attacked their captor and lived." In a Page One story in The New York Times, this headline -- "Grief and Dread at Girls' Burial Site in Oregon" -- described the terror local residents are feeling "in a summer filled with reports of missing girls across the country."

This is a classic example of news judgment driving public perception. Watching television -- especially the cable networks such as CNN, Court TV, MSNBC and Fox -- or reading the newspapers, the casual observer might be tempted to wonder if open season has been declared on young girls.

If the daily news does not produce a report of a kidnapping somewhere in the United States, there are plenty of alternatives to fill up space. You can describe the ancillary reactions of family and neighbors. You can talk to legislators who are drafting bills or financing hot lines and data banks.

Or you can interview experts on child abduction and/or personal security, who will tell you it's a dangerous world out there and describe steps you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones.

All of this, needless to say, will have the effect of frightening people (especially children), causing many to alter their daily routines, change the course of their lives, distort the way they look at their fellow citizens -- and, of course, keep tuning in to learn the names of the latest victims.

The trouble is that all this is premised on the flimsiest evidence. There is no upward trend in abductions and murders of girls in the United States; indeed, according to the FBI, such crimes have declined significantly in the past few years. And the numbers being bandied about bear no resemblance to reality.

One of the worst of the TV blowhards, Fox's Bill O'Reilly, claims "100,000 abductions of children by strangers every year." In fact, says the FBI, the figure is closer to 100. As Barry Glassner writes in The Wall Street Journal, "Apparently, someone on Mr. O'Reilly's staff added three extra zeroes. Perhaps they've hired the accountants from Enron."

Not too many seasons ago, African American churches of the rural South were going up in flames at a prodigious rate, and the nation's nursery schools were scenes of unspeakable violence and depravity. Before that, the "one million missing children" were immortalized on milk cartons.

We like to think that we are a rational people, and we shake our heads at stories of colonial witch trials or medieval frenzies about Christian children supposedly kidnapped and killed by Jews during Passover. But somewhere between the cell phone calls and the march of medical science, there's a prehistoric hunger for terror and hysteria that is never quite satisfied.

2002, The Providence Journal Reach Philip Terzian, associate editor of the Providence Journal, at Providence Journal, 1325 G Street N.W., Suite 250, Washington, D.C. 20005.

Last summer, on the eve of Sept. 11, we were reeling from an epidemic of shark attacks along the Atlantic beaches -- which seems to have ended with the terrorist assaults on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Then there was the summer when that same coastline was infested with toxic medical waste, an unprecedented ecological disaster.
Not too many seasons ago, African American churches of the rural South were going up in flames at a prodigious rate, and the nation's nursery schools were scenes of unspeakable violence and depravity. Before that, the "one million missing children" were immortalized on milk cartons.

I was just saying something along these lines moments ago on another thread.

Shepard Smith really hypes the stories, too, along with his own interpretations each time of who did it and why. I like him for the most part but I do think he can be very irresponsible and he seems to seek out sensationalism daily. More than the others on Fox, anyway. I don't watch the other networks any more but I would assume their entire on-air staffs are at least as guilty of this approach!

"...This is a classic example of news judgment driving public perception..."

And yet another reason why I don't watch the nightly news shows anymore,much less than say, more than a few minutes of our local news.Thank god I can go online and make my own judgements and find out what's really going on in the world.I also believe alot more people do this than anyone in the media is willing to admit.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the newsies would at least report these cases factually. Court TV, CNN, John Walsh and even Fox has reported some of the most outrageous things about the Westerfield case. Kind of makes you scratch your head--obviously it's not their first day on the job, so why the errors?

Kind of makes you scratch your head--obviously it's not their first day on the job, so why the errors?

If I were paranoid, I might think there was something going on. ...

But I agree with you about the lack of factual content.

"He steam cleaned his motorhome. Can you believe that? He actually did that! He staem cleaned his motor home!"

And after that, she is suddenly the substitute host for Larry King.

Go figger.

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