Know Your Audience

It is easy to blame politicians and the media for the distorted and context-free condition under which terrorism is so often discussed. In many respects, however, that circumstance arises not so much from their own proclivities, but rather from those of their customers. Hysteria and alarmism often sell.

The record with respect to fear about crime, for example, suggests that efforts to deal responsibly with the risks of terrorism will prove difficult. Fear of crime rose notably in the mid-1990s, even as statistics were showing crime to be in pronounced decline. When David Dinkins, running for re-election as mayor of New York, pointed to such numbers, he was accused by A. M. Rosenthal of The New York Times of hiding behind “trivializing statistics” that “are supposed to convince us that crime is going down.” New Yorkers did eventually come to feel safer from crime, but that was probably less because crime rates actually declined than because of atmospherics as graffiti, panhandlers, aggressive windshield washers, and the homeless were banished or hidden from view. So it may have made sense in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks to have armed reservists parading around in airports. It is not clear how they prevented terrorist attacks, and pulling them from productive jobs hardly helped the economy. But if they provided people with a sense of security, their presence may have been worth it.

In the end, it is not clear how one can deal with the public’s often irrational -- or at least erratic -- fears about remote dangers. Some people say they prefer comparatively dangerous forms of transportation like the private passenger automobile (the cause of over 3 million American deaths during the 20th century) to safe ones like commercial airliners because they feel they have more “control.” But they seem to feel no fear on buses and trains -- which actually are more dangerous than airliners -- even without having that sense of control and even though derailing a speeding train or crashing a speeding bus is likely to be much easier for a terrorist than downing an airliner. And people tend to be more alarmed by dramatic fatalities -- which the Sept. 11 crashes certainly provided -- than by ones that cumulate statistically. Thus, the 3,000 deaths of Sept. 11 inspire far more grief and fear than the 100,000 deaths from auto accidents that have taken place since then. In some respects, fear of terror may be something like playing the lottery, except in reverse: The chances of winning the lottery or of dying from terrorism may be microscopic, but for monumental events that are, or seem, random, one can irrelevantly conclude that one’s chances are just as good, or bad, as those of anyone else.

The communication of risk, then, is no easy task. Risk analyst Paul Slovic points out that people tend greatly to overestimate the chances of dramatic or sensational causes of death, that realistically informing people about risks sometimes only makes them more frightened, that strong beliefs in this area are very difficult to modify, that a new sort of calamity tends to be taken as harbinger of future mishaps, that a disaster tends to increase fears not only about that kind of danger, but of all kinds, and that people, even professionals, are susceptible to the way risks are expressed -- far less likely, for example, to choose radiation therapy if told the chances of death are 32% rather than that the chances of survival are 68%.

But risk assessment and communication should at least be part of the policy discussion over terrorism, something that may well prove to be a far smaller danger than is popularly portrayed. The constant, unnuanced stoking of fear by politicians and the media is costly, enervating, potentially counterproductive, and unjustified by the facts.

Continued.

Conclusion

The policy perspective toward terrorism I suggest may not be more valid than other ones, and no one knows, of course, how the problem will play out in future years. However, the policy advanced here seems to me a sound and sensible one, and for there to be a really coherent policy discussion, it should be part of the mix.

Deep concern about extreme events is not necessarily unreasonable or harmful. Thus, efforts to confront terrorism and reduce its incidence and destructiveness are justified. But hysteria is hardly required. As always, there are uncertainties and risks out there, and plenty of dangers and threats. But none are existential. The sky, as it happens, is unlikely to fall anytime soon.

Regards,
John Mueller