Are the news media killing us?

I'm currently reading a very interesting book, "Influence" by Robert B. Cialdini.

It's about social psychology and how manipulative schemes can influence us and make us do things we otherwise wouldn't do. (Great book, by the way, very informative and very entertaining.)

One of the chapters is about "social proof," meaning that people will look to others' reactions to see what kind of behavior is socially appropriate. That's why canned laughter in TV shows works, even though everyone hates it. That's also why there are so many situations where people collapse on the sidewalk and there are dozens of bystanders and no one helps ("As long as other people seem unconcerned, there's no real emergency, so I don't need to do anything.") Studies found, for example, that a person who, say, has a heart attack, has a much better chance being helped if there's only ONE bystander than if there's a whole group -- the single bystander will almost always help, whereas the group will look to each other to "do something."

But let's get to the issue I want to talk about. According to statistics, whenever there's a highly publicized suicide in the news media, mysteriously, the number of fatal plane and car crashes in the week after that news will shoot up.

... it has been shown that immediately following certain kinds of highly publicized suicide stories, the number of people who die in commercial-airline crashes increases by 1,000 percent!
...
Fatal crashes increase dramatically only in those regions where the suicide has been highly publicized. Other places, existing under similar social conditions, whose newspapers have not publicized the story, have shown no comparable jump in such fatalities.
...
Newspaper stories reporting on suicide victims who died alone produce in increase in the frequency of single-fatality wrecks only, whereas stories reporting on suicide-plus-murder incidents produce an increase in multiple-fatality wrecks only.

Also, when the suicide story is about a young, white male, the following fatal car crashes involve mainly young, white males; when an older person has committed suicide, the fatal crashes will involve older people.

Researchers of this strange phenomenon ascribe it to the "Werther Effect." More than 200 years ago, German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a novel titled "The Sorrows of Young Werther." In the novel, the hero commits suicide -- and its publication sparked a wave of emulative suicides all over Europe.

The researchers believe that when already depressed people read or hear about a suicide of someone who is similar to themselves, they feel (due to the "social proof") that suicide is an acceptable way out and imitate that person. The author says that it's car crashes because people want to commit suicide in secret -- in order to not cause their families grief, or to enable their loved ones to cash in on insurance policies.

I don't buy that explanation, though, I think this goes much deeper. I believe that depressed people who have a latent death wish read about such a suicide, which then causes them (subconsciously) to be less alert on the road or to drive more sloppily or faster than they usually would. I don't think this "fatal crash wave" is a conscious decision so much as a subconscious "giving up" and just not caring about their well-being anymore.

(By the way, the same goes for homicides: A highly publicized murder will raise homicide rates in that region; so will a heavyweight boxing championship on TV. If the loser is a black man, black homicides go up; if the loser is a white guy, white homicides go up.)

So I was thinking that if this is all true -- and it has been thoroughly studied, so I assume it is -- the news media are singlehandedly responsible for many deaths in our country. With their motto, "If it bleeds, it leads," and never reporting anything positive but always focusing on the most horrible crimes, suicides, etc., they actually CAUSE these waves of fatalities following sensationalist news stories.

I guess the solution would be not to read those kinds of news stories AND to be extra careful on the road right after stories like that have been widely published.

Very interesting post.
I believe they are killing us in many ways.
Not reporting the truth in anything being a big one.

reply to post by sylvie


A suicide within a close knit group of people (Military, School, Employment, etc) has led to other suicides within that group, though not always. (This has been documented.)

It's not just the News Media that is doing this, but the MSM in general, and the lack of truly educational resources that rely on critical thinking, rather than learning by rote.

If Raj commited a theatric suicide, bringing The Big Bang Theory to a end. I'm pretty sure that quite a few others across the world would follow suit.

It is programming. I have no doubt about that.

reply to post by sylvie


Really interesting post, thank you for that.

This whole topic is obviously very complex, but I think it is safe to say that group dynamics and their psychological background are pretty well researched.

Obviously the media do have the power to at least emphasize or downplay certain news items. Look at the various flu panics we had without any real justifed concern and ridiculous numbers of victims.

However, I think that it is human nature to make stories bigger than they need to be sometimes. Everyday people know that from the gossip around the water cooler for example. The media are in a way just a magnified example of the same principle.

Of course then you could ask the question if the media is maybe actively controlled to play certain items or neglect others. In Berlusconi´s Italy for example this could be a real concern.

Anway, the real question is what consequences these realizations have for our daily lives. And the answer is to take everything with a grain of salt and fact check the important ones for yourself.

reply to post by Nightaudit


The author also says that he's become very cautious on the road and with plane rides after a big suicide story in the news... obviously those "latent death wish" drivers/pilots don't always just kill themselves; there can be other cars involved and such.

Here's the thing...the man who speaks in a room full of mutes automatically has more power than his peers. Likewise, you insert the news media into a world of people who don't normally do research on their own, and you're left with a sheep population that believes only what it's told. Eat this. Don't wear that. So and So just did such and such to whatever...the world believes it because it's all their being fed.


Let me also add on the topic of suicide, that in a lot of cases, specifically 9/11, all some people need is the example of acceptance. Like when the first person dove from the towers that day, others eventually said, "Okay, so I guess we're all jumping then."

Military members are dropping like flies because of PTSD. It sucks.