by Nick Bulka

Created on: August 12, 2007

Many people can write an article explaining why they think the media uses scare tactics to portray potentially negative news. The writers who drone on about the value of fear in persuasion all essentially agree on one point; fear is valuable. Few actually attempt to answer the question of HOW the media uses the scare tactics. Which methods does the media employ to ensure that fear will be the resulting emotion? This essay attempts to actually answer this question.

We will take a look at an article that was published online today and scrutinize it to decipher how scare tactics are presented for potentially negative news. The potentially negative news in the article below is that we now have "knowledge," however credible it may (not) be, that al Qaeda may be planning a radiological attack. Several key words pop up in this summary. Al Qaeda. Radiological ATTACK. These are loaded words, a common form of propaganda. The article continually links al Qaeda to a video, a person, even the websites where the rumors originated. They make it seem like al Qaeda has its own little personal website that WE can access to extract data to discover their plans to kill us. How convenient would that be? Why does the article make it seem like this? The loaded words make us connect the fear that is created from the connotation of these words (attack, radiological, al Qaeda) to an unconfirmed, likely bogus threat. Now we begin checking the news more often with our newfound fear (generating a returning population/consumer base for the choice media) and everyone is happy (and scared).

The article also discusses cities that were "mentioned" in the report; mind you, the report is based on "chatter allegedly seen Thursday on al Qaeda Web sites." Mentioning each individual city is key. It attempts to create a realistic scenario in readers minds that an attack is possible while creating a place for it to occur. This is scary. Most everyone knows someone who lives in one of these cities. Losing a friend or anyone you have a relationship with is scary.

This is how they scare us. They try to pretend like we should be checking back on this story, on the off chance that this potentially negative news turns into something big. They want to be the ones to say, check back tomorrow because you don't want to be hearing "We told you so" after the attack occurs. The "chatter allegedly seen Thursday on al Qaeda Web sites" is probably not very threatening. But through methods of propaganda, the media uses scare tactics to present these rumors.

Chernoff, Allen. "New York Police Take Precautions After Purported Al Qaeda Threat." Cnn.Com/Us. 11 Aug. 2007. CNN. 11 Aug. 2007 .

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