This morning, I reread the chapter in Bernard Goldberg’s book “Bias” about how the national media back in the mid to late 1980s handled the situation with AIDS and basically tried to scare ordinary monogamous heterosexual Americans into believing AIDS was coming after them, even though the disease was only affecting drug addicts who shared needles and young homosexual men practicing non monogamous sex without protection. And the media’s hysterical antics were of course also aimed at Reagan and the Republicans.
Basically, Goldberg could have easily been writing about what the media have been doing all of these years later: scaring people about a virus that is spread by people not using common sense personal sanitary habits and that the disease affects or kills only a small select group of people (the elderly and/or people with preexisting health problems).
I have to keep reminding myself with this from long ago.
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” -— Mark Twain
Bias was the book that opened my eyes. I hadn’t known that I had been so misled until I read that book.