Fear-mongering in the media

1. I think that media in general, not just newspapers, blows important medical topics out of proportion. For example, vaccinations and a possible link to the development of autism, along with H1N1, bird flu, SARS, etc. This is a problem because you get people who start self-diagnosing and panicking for no good reason. This leads to an overload of information causing mass hysteria, thus preventing the dissemination of important facts and information.

2. The media has the tendency to sensationalize stories to pick up viewers or sales. I think that it's especially seen with diseases, vaccines, basically anything that has to do with medicine and health. Things are blown out of proportion regularly, causing unnecessary fear and panic among the populace.

I'm not saying that the public doesn't need to or not deserve to know what's going on, because they do. But the format that they present the information only increase fear and worry. It usually leads in (on television) with scary music accompanied by a man's deep voice saying something along the lines of "Are your kids safe from the H1N1? More at 9." Journalists go in-depth into every single thing that could go wrong if you get the flu, if you get the vaccine, if you don't get the flu, and so on.

This is a problem because it creates a strain on resources that are already in limited supply, like vaccines. People flood doctors' offices and hospitals, and telling other people causing undue panic. This vicious cycle leads to extending the time it takes to deal with the problem by overwhelming people, allowing more people to get sick than would have if the situation was dealt with in a non-panic and orderly fashion.

The way to fix this would be just stating the facts of the sickness/situation, how to deal with it if or when a problem arises, and we would get into a nice lull like with fire drills where everyone calmly proceeds outside in a timely, orderly fashion.