Cable News = Entertainment

The above image is classic cable news strategy; Say something really frightening, anything at all, even if it makes no damn sense (like the notion that a virus would share the same intent as ISIS) , but put a question mark at the end of your statement. They do this just before cutting to commercial so you'll stay hooked. Let's give it a try. If you wanted to really shock someone what would you say? How about this: Japan is killing Americans!  Not bad, but it has to be a question so we can later say "Hey, I didn't say Japan is killing Americans. I just asked the question." Let's go with Is Japan killing Americans? Nice. On a slow news day people would gobble this up. Better yet, we should use it on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack! Now we are tapping into all kinds dormant fear. Fear fear fear. Lovely. And while no reasonable person would think such a thing is factual, our query suggests there must be some actual possibility or else we wouldn't be asking the question. Quickly, let's cash in on this by selling some Chevys, teeth whitening strips, and a promo for our other program that we call news but is just a handful of nobodys talking out of their a##'s. Cha Ching $$$$$$$$! Back to our broadcast and the story of how nuclear waste from the Fukashima reactor has been detected in the waters off California.  An "expert" will attest to this fact then let us down easy by saying "trace levels of radiation do not pose a serious threat at this point." Then, to keep the story alive, he will warn that this could take a turn for the worse at any time so he will be back with updates. Viewers will feel a little duped, of course, because they imagined Japanese firing squads or long lost POWs being cast down a volcano, but hey, that was their mind at work. We didn't say any of that. Now, let's hit 'em with a colorful graphic and ominus music to lead into our next story before they change the channel.

We must begin by recognizing that televised news is a business. These programs make money by selling the advertising sprinkled throughout their broadcast. The more viewers a news program garners, the more money it can demand from advertisers. That part is pretty straight forward; produce a fact-filled news cast, well researched, clearly explained, and people will tune in. Protect the integrity of your work and viewers will come back again and again as you earn their trust. This was the model throughout the golden years of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, and it worked beautifully.

But several things changed with the advent of cable news, rendering the old model obsolete. Instead of the news being a one hour broadcast, we suddenly had channels pumping news out 24 hours a day. Yet the world was still producing the same amount of newsworthy items. So a lot of junk that would have never made the cut in the Walter Cronkite era now finds its way into prime time broadcasts. But cable news knows it has to really sell that crap to convince viewers that it is meaningful to them so queue the flashy graphics, bold music and obscure "experts" drug before the camera like some wide-eyed nocturnal animal. Then, when real news does happen, the cable news outlets run the story over and over, speculating recklessly while facts are still forming. I watched Wolf Blitzer fill ten minutes of air time the other day by simply restating the same sentence over and over until some new insight was pumped through his ear piece. The man is a master -- not at news --he asks very few hard questions--but at keeping viewers engaged while the minutes count down to the next commercial break. THAT, dear readers, is what Wolf is paid to do, which is a completly different job than the one occupied by Dan Rather.

But the offense goes far beyond poor reporting and the dressing up of news that isn't really news. Consider the tone of what you see on cable news. The vast majority of stories are designed to make you feel either fear or anger. Try watching a cable news program sometime and just ask yourself after each story what emotion it left you with. They will give you just enough happy to keep you from slitting your wrists (dead viewers are of little value) but otherwise it's a steady diet of fear and anger, garnished with sadness. In fact, the negative bias of the news media is so well understood that the people in that industry would be the last to refute this claim. Why is this so? Because it works.

I'll save for another article the psycological explanation for why we are more attentive to bad news than good, and simply state for now that such a propensity is most certainly hard-wired into our being. Think about it: If the opening story of a news cast talked about how things are pretty much O.K. in the world you would reach for the remote and be watching Naked and afaid before they cut to weather. So it's not surprising the news hits you right between the eyes at the start. Have you ever heard the expression "If it bleeds it leads"? That's what's going on.

All of this, combined with a sensationalism normally reserved for 14 year old girls, adds up to a city tour through the alleys of anxiety. And yet, asking cable news to change this would be like demanding that Jack Daniels remove the alcohol from its whiskey. In both cases we choose to consume. Herein, however, lies the critical distinction. We all know shitty news is bad for us, but we haven't yet figured out that is what we are watching. It is as if someone swapped our kool aid for a high ball and now we're too drunk to know it.

So I ask you, my fellow sardines, what use is it for you to know on day four of the Malaysian Air  370 disappearance that it still has not been found? Are you going to go look for it? Are you going to write your senators and ask them to go look for it? Did you send money to the families of the passengers? I just heard three "no"s. You found the whole incident sad and it made you that much more fearful of both flying and Malaysia. In the mean time Fox News or CNN made a wad of cash in exchange. Are you better off? Are the passengers of that plane better off? Cable news is the only winner here, and they won big.

If you still hunger to know all the world's sadness I suggest you either purchase your news content (Rueters is an excellent source and The Economist has a great app for $2.99/month) or listen to NPR. Your information will be void of drama and hyperbole. As well, local network news (which still clings to dignity) offers information that may directly affect you by way of proximity. That said, it's hard to imagine the consumption of any news without accumulating fear on some level. So my advice to the Sardine Safety nation is that you opt out entirely. Don't watch, read, or listen to the news. If something truly relevant should arise you will hear about it from your barber or some lady in the checkout isle. In the mean time keep swimming.

Sardine Safety - because fear is a choice.

I was imagining recently what it would be like to work as a Coroner in the sardine world. Aside from there being no remains to examine, every single death certificate would show the cause of death as "Eaten". Eaten eaten eaten... Sardines don't fall off ladders or get struck by lightening. They aren't gunned down by an ex-lover or succumb to the effects of obesity. If a sardine gets a little sick he might swim slower and, as a result, become a prime target for a predator. He will die of barracuda long before the common cold takes him. Life. Death. Not much in between.

So there it is. The sardine goes about his business, swimming with his school, right up to the moment he becomes lunch. He probably doesn't even see it coming. In the dense schools that sardines travel, each fish is reacting to the fish beside him in an instant chain reaction moving inward from the outter-most fish. Any given sardine in the middle is just thinking OK, we're turning left now. More left. Sharp right turn. What the hell?! I'm eaten! Shit! Right up to that point the sardine's life was pretty good. He just hung out with his friends, feeding on zooplankton without a care in the world. The main reason the sardine lived without fear is that he knew he was protected by the greatest form of safety one could ever choose, what I call Sardine Safety.

Sardine Safety is the principal that you are but one fish in a vast school. If a dolphin dashes in to eat a sardine it is very unlikley it will be you. The larger your school, the less likely still. Even if the dolphin trys to target you specifically he will starve to death during the chase as you easily disappear, again and again, into the camoflage of a million identical sardines.

The Lion Fish swims alone. He is protected by venomous tenticles and, being a rugged individualist, he likes things that way. But the major short-coming of this is that whenever trouble comes it is coming for him. He might be handy with his weapons, but any predator worth his sushi will take the sting as fair trade for an easy lunch and move on.

Us humans enjoy sardine safety. There are billions of us. Just counting the United States, our school adds up to 320 million sardine. But somewhere along the way we forgot about this. We are told on a daily basis about some new threat we should fear like home invasions or a roller coaster crash, and the telling is done with such personal concern that we come to feel vulnerable, certain that it is just a matter of time before we too perish in a carnival accident. Little surprise that most of us see ourselves more as Lion fish, dreading the inevitable and just hoping to get in a few good licks on our way to the digestive tract.

On a personal scale this introduces a host of anxieties to our lives which are often neutralized by sardine safety, but no one mentions that part. Just as often, we are told to fear fish that don't even swim in our waters. This robs a great deal of joy from our lives while doing nothing to make us safer. There are whole industies that profit from telling us to be afraid. The insurance industry, politicians and the various forms of media are prime offenders. There is a great deal of money to be made in telling people to be afraid and, for reasons we will explore later, there is zero profit in telling them not to be. So no one bothers. Until now.  Sardine Safety will serve as a counter voice to these forces, and to assure the integrity of what it is written here, Sardine Safety will not accept donations or sell advertising of any kind (O.K., a nice bottle of wine would not be unwelcome). All Sardine Safety wants is to reduce the anxiety in your life by way of facts, logic, and humor so you can get back to being a happy sardine. swim swim swim.

On a collective scale Sardine Safety hopes to influence the choices we make in the allocation of public funds. Too often our elected officials spend money on things they know we already perceive to be a risk because it has been covered extensively in the news cycle, like terrorism or Ebola. Who could ever fault them for spending on such obvious threats to our safety? Yet, the actual risk is quite small when compared to lightening strikes, which kill about 1,000 americans per year, and the flu, which kills over 30,000 americans annually. If 2% of the budget for fighting terrorism, which kills 300 americans per year, were used to provide free flu shots to every man, woman, and child in the U.S. we might easily save 15,000 lives. There should be a conversation about these choices. Sardine Safety hopes to be a part of that dialogue.