The Media and Risk

Abstract

Abstract The column inches of newspaper space and the minutes of television time devoted to risk rarely neatly parallel scientifically defined hierarchies. A death from an aeroplane accident is 6,000 times more likely to make the front page than a death from cancer, and nuclear accidents receive far greater attention than the fatalities caused by smoking (Greenberg et al. 1989). Nor do patterns of media attention parallel the actual trajectory of any particular threat.