In January 2007, a group of leading scientists, including astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, announced that the hands of the “Doomsday Clock”—a creation of the board of directors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists—would be moved forward. It was “five minutes to midnight,” they said. A key reason for this warning was the fact that, according to the statement of the board of directors, “global warming poses a dire threat to human civilization that is second only to nuclear weapons.” Thanks to the prestige of the scientists involved, this statement garnered headlines around the world. But it was politics, not science.
According to the IPCC, there are still enormous uncertainties about the consequences of climate change, and it is very possible those consequences will be nothing like the civilizational crisis claimed by Stephen Hawking and his colleagues. Even the most basic consequences—things that activists typically assume will happen—are uncertain. The report says it is “likely” that drought will increase—meaning greater than a 66 percent chance. How great that increase will be if it happens is far less clear, and more work needs to be done before the degree of certainty improves. The report also states that it’s “likely” that sea levels will rise, but scientists debate how high they will go. We don’t hear about this uncertainty from activists, though. In a magazine ad from the World Wildlife Fund, a boy in a baseball uniform stands with his bat ready, waiting for the pitch, paying no attention to the fact that he is submerged in water up to his shoulders. “Ignoring global warming won’t make it go away,” says the ad. It’s an arresting image, but the IPCC estimates that, under a variety of scenarios, climate change will cause the oceans to rise somewhere between seven and twenty-three inches. That is serious, but it doesn’t lend itself to public campaigning, because a picture of someone shin-deep in water isn’t going to catch the attention of a bored woman flipping through a magazine in her dentist’s waiting room. A boy oblivious to the fact he is about to drown may be misleading, but it certainly gets the job done.
Some organizations certainly try to strike a balance between accuracy and effectiveness. A common way to do this is to prepare an informed, responsible,balanced report—and then publicize it with a simplistic and frightening press release. “Global cancer rates could increase by 50 percent to 15 million by 2020,” reads the headline of a press release announcing the publication of the World Health Organization’s World Cancer Report. Following this is a barrage of frightening statistics and statements—“Cancer rates are set to increase at an alarming rate globally”—that goes on for six paragraphs before this little sentence appears: “The predicted sharp increase in new cases . . . will mainly be due to steadily aging populations in both the developed and developing countries and also to current trends in smoking prevalence and the growing adoption of unhealthy lifestyles.” So the biggest source of the frightening headline is population aging, and population aging is partly the result of people living longer than ever before—which is actually good news, one would think. As for smoking, those of us living in the developed world can be heartened by the fact that smoking rates are declining and cancers caused by smoking are falling as a result. Put all this together and you get a sense of what the report actually shows: The truth about cancer is a mix of good news, bad news, and uncertainties that does not lend itself to a scary headline and shocking one-line summary. But WHO’s publicists know that a scary headline and some “alarming” facts are essential to getting media coverage, so they portrayed their report as the frightening wake-up call it is not.
If press-release hype stayed in press releases, none of this would matter. But it doesn’t, and this does matter. Reporters are increasingly asked to do more in less time and, as a result, they commonly do not read the studies they write about. What they read is the press release. It is the basis of the story, not the report. Savvy organizations know this, which is why press releases are written in a format that mirrors the standard news story: headline, lead sentence framing the issue, details, key numbers, quotations from officials and experts. Reporters pressed for time can whip out a superficially satisfying story in no time if they follow the press release’s structure and use the facts and quotations provided. Sometimes they do. More often, they’ll frame the story as the press release has framed it but add some comments from other experts or, perhaps, some facts and figures gleaned from a quick scan of the report. What the reporter is very unlikely to do, however, is read the study, think about the issue, and decide for herself what’s important and how the story should be framed. The press release settles that, particularly the press release’s headline and lead sentence—and since the headlines and lead sentences of press releases are so often sensationalized, so is the story.
The reader will have noticed how references to “the media” sprouted throughout this chapter. That’s because for every organization marketing fear—from corporations to charities—the media play an essential role. And so it’s to the newsrooms and television studios we go next.
8
All the Fear That’s Fit to Print
The toddler grins madly and leans toward the camera, one bare foot forward, as if she is about to rush ahead and wrap her arms around the photographer’s knees. She is so young. Baby fat bulges at her wrist. It is an image suffused with joy—a gorgeous, glowing, black-and-white portrait a mother would place on a bedside table, or perhaps in the front hall to be shown to anyone who comes through the door. But it is instead on the front page of a newspaper, which can only mean tragedy.
The little girl’s name is Shelby Gagne. The tragedy is hinted at in a detail easily missed: Her hair is short and wispy, like a newborn’s, or a toddler undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy.
When Shelby was twenty-two months old, an inexplicable lump appeared in her shoulder. “She had stage 4 Ewing’s carcinoma, a kind of bone-and-soft-tissue cancer that affects boys more often than girls, usually teenagers. Shelby was a one-in-a-million case. And her cancer was running like mad: In three days between CT scans, the spots on her lungs grew from pepper-like flecks to recognizable nodules of cancer,” wrote Erin Anderssen. A barrage of surgeries and radical treatments followed. Her mother, Rebecca, “immediately quit her job, splitting twenty-four-hour shifts at the hospital with her mother, Carol McHugh. Her husband, Steve, a car salesman, had to continue pitching options and warranties knowing that his child was dying. Someone had to cover the mortgage.”
The little girl descended into agony. “She had high fevers. She suffered third-degree radiation burns. Her mouth became so raw with sores she couldn’t swallow her own saliva. She threw up five to ten times a day.” It was all futile. Shelby was moved into palliative care. “Even drugged,” Anderssen writes, “Shelby coughs and vomits and shivers. It does not stop. It is more than any human should bear, let alone a little, brown-eyed girl just turned three. People still write Rebecca to say they are hoping for a miracle. But she knows Shelby is beyond the kind of miracle they’re hoping for. Holding her, here in the soft shadows of the hospital room, Rebecca Gagne does not pray for her daughter to live. She prays, with the selfless love of a mother, for Shelby to die.” And she did, not long after.