A new bacteria is poised to become the Next Big Fake Thing perpetrated on the public by the press. The so-called superbug is being called NDM-1. And the Fox News headline is true to form for how the media handles items like this:
New Drug-Resistant 'Superbug' Claims First Life
Read that headline very carefully, will ya? One guy, out of some six billion in the world, has died from a tough little bacteria. Not newsworthy, but the wording of the headline makes it newsworthy.
For those keeping score, here's my list of media scares:
Y2K - the former undisputed heavyweight champ
Global cooling
Global warming - defeated Y2K for the biggest non-story in history
SARs
Bird flu
Foot and mouth disease
Mad cow disease
Swine flu / H1N1 - a flue that was as mild as seasonal flu and not more infectious somehow was labeled a pandemic and caused Mexicans to be quarantined in some Asian countries all because of the media, not reality
Acid rain
Overpopulation
Hurricane Katrina - even a genuine disaster had to be exaggerated all out of proportion; inaccurate outbursts by single sources were often reported as fact in newspapers across the country
Unintended acceleration, Audi
Unintended acceleration, the sequel, Toyota
Am I missing any?
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