Sometimes you just have to look reality in the eye and deny it.
Garrison Keillor
Many viewers are alarmed and disgusted by graphic depictions of violence, crime, and ever-present sex scandals.
Some have decided to tune out or turn off.
It’s not a good idea to deny reality, but it sure would be a lot healthier if we put it into perspective. The bad and the bizarre are real but they’re not typical. Na tional surveys continue to show that after terrorism, crime is the number-one concern of Americans, while statistics show that crime rates are coming down.
Crime is of such concern because it dominates the news. Comedian Wally Cox once said that he developed perspective by putting his newspaper in a drawer for two weeks without reading it. Then he’d take it out, read the headline, and say, ‘Thank God that’s not happening now.”
If the news has you down, just remember the first law of today’s journalism: There’s nothing so small that it can’t be blown out of proportion.
