Fear and Panic: A Quantitative Analysis
by sarabeth at 6:00 am on July 19th, 2007 in Bush Man Date, Media, War on TerrorThere was, as you have probably heard ad infinitum by now, an explosion near Grand Central Terminal in New York City at 5:56 pm yesterday. All the initial reports on the news networks focused on fear and panic in the streets. No one seemed to question that fear and panic was the appropriate first response. Or that the degree of fear and panic was warranted by the explosion event.
I would like to place my beliefs on record:
• There is no doubt that an explosion of this type would cause some degree of fear and panic anywhere in the world.
• I firmly believe that the degree of fear and panic observed in NYC yesterday was much greater than a similar explosion would have caused in other countries that have suffered terrorist attacks in recent years: Britain, Spain, Egypt, India. Some of these countries — Britain and India, certainly — have even got used to living under the constant threat of terrorist attacks.
• I firmly believe that part of the reason why Americans display more fear and panic at such events than Brits or Indians is the way our government has carefully and cynically stoked our fears these last 6 years or so.
• I firmly believe that part of the reason why New Yorkers displayed more fear and panic yesterday than they might otherwise have done is the way the media carefully and cynically covered the event—playing up the “nobody knows what’s behind this super-spectacular explosion in which we still don’t know how many people may have died, if any” angle as long as they possibly could.
That, by the way, is the definition of responsible reporting. Because they added the “if any” at the end.
Maybe if the networks were allowed to display more sex and violence on TV, they wouldn’t need to stoke and exploit our fears the way they do? After it became clear that terrorist activity had been ruled out, they smoothly moved on to: “But is the air safe to breathe?”. Not without reason, though:
“There was a steam rupture at 5:56 p.m. at East 41st and Lexington,” said Michael S. Clendenin, a Con Edison spokesman. “We’re in the process of isolating the steam rupture right now. We have to isolate the steam from different valves. Once we get that done, we also have to assess any collateral damage to the electric system. We do not have electrical outages at this time. We always assume there’s asbestos in a steampipe, so we are treating these materials set up by the rupture, including piping, as if asbestos were in them. We will be doing testing for asbestos.”
New Yorkers are presumably thinking to themselves: “Effed again, huh? Who should we turn to now, to figure out when the air near the site of the explosion is safe to breathe?”
The EPA doesn’t exactly have much credibility on this matter at this point. Nor, thanks to Rudee, does the city government.
Or maybe Bloomberg doesn’t inherit Rudee’s baggage?
sac wrote:
I think part of the reason Americans have a stronger reaction to such events than those in other countries is the peculiarly American sense that everything can be overcome. That we shouldn’t have to live with, for instance, a steam pipe exploding. This quality is our greatest strength and weakness. It’s the reason for the unprecedented economic and social progress of the 20th C, as well as for the unprecedented violence and conquest of the 20th C.
I also agree with everything you said in this post.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 7:50 am ¶
crystalattice wrote:
I have always felt this way, that our government and media are working (consciously or not) to create an artificial level of fear in the populace. Especially Mr. Homeland Security scaring people with his “gut feeling” that something bad will happen somewhere sometime this summer.
Hence, anytime something “bad” happens, the immediate thought for everyone is that “duh terror” is upon us and we’re all going to die.
It’s like the idiots after 9/11 who were so paranoid they were going to die that they wouldn’t leave their houses. The fact of the matter is more people die annually from accidents in the house than died in 9/11.
If people’s first thought to any event is to believe that it’s related to terrorists, then the terrorists have already won.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 10:25 am ¶
john wrote:
As a regular reader of this site who works in a building very close to the site of the explosion yesterday, I’d argue with your second belief - the media may have portrayed a sense of fear and panic on the ground, but overall, besides getting the hell away from a huge plume of what looked like smoke and seemed to still be exploding, people were pretty calm. People helped direct traffic so that emergency vehicles could get to the scene, and people were very helpful in passing along information as they found it out. All together, it was a pretty calm scene. Many people just kept going about their business.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 1:48 pm ¶
David wrote:
I agree with John at #3. I work in a building that’s on the same block the explosion took place. It was a very scary experience - the noise was frightening, and it was impossible to know the source. But as the entire building filed down nearly 50 flights of stairs, there was no panic. Definitely people were nervous and tense, but there was no pushing or shoving.
I’m not sure what sort of “panic” sarabeth is referring to, as she doesn’t link to any photos or videos. I mean, surely people fleeing the epicenter of the explosion at high speed is eminently reasonable, no? And I have seen no reports of people being trampled in a mad rush to flee any place - the sort of thing you’d associate with a panicked response in a place as densely populated as midtown Manhattan.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 1:59 pm ¶
matt wrote:
cable news hosts?
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 2:04 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
John, I’m really glad to hear that. This certainly was not the way the media portrayed things yesterday. I wish they had.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 2:56 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
As for David’s comment, it’s a bit over the top, isn’t it?
There were no reports of people being trampled in a mad rush to flee on 9/11 either. So I guess that means the 9/11 attacks did not cause any fear and panic in NYC?
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 2:58 pm ¶
David wrote:
Oh, I don’t doubt that TV coverage totally hyped the panic. But sarabeth didn’t appear to be engaging in media criticism when she referred to “the degree of fear and panic observed” - she seemed to be discussing what she believes actually happened.
And as I say, from my close-up (but admittedly limited) experience yesterday, I didn’t see any panic. At all. I think that many elements in this country have indeed sought to hype fear and panic for years, for their own gain. But I think it’s quite a testament to New Yorkers that, despite all this fear-mongering - whether by politicians or the traditional media - we showed as little panic as we did. Because I can say pretty confidently that if you had heard what I heard yesterday, you very likely would have been scared, too.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 2:58 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
the second sentence of my post was meant to be a dead giveaway:
since I don’t live in NYC I can only infer what happened from media reports. I put that on the table first before I started to comment.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 3:07 pm ¶
David wrote:
Sarabeth, I’m not entirely sure how to define panic, then, though I do distinguish it from fear. I usually think of panic as people acting irrationally, leading to the sorts of behavior which make potentially dangerous situations moreso. You are right - there are certainly lots of way panic can manifest.
All I’m saying is that, as I descended 42 flights of stairs with absolutely zero information except a truly terrifying, un-ending roar, I didn’t see panic manifest in just about the only way you’d expect in that sort of situation - ie, pushing, shoving, stampeding, screaming, hollering. Everyone stayed under control and just kept marching downwards.
Were people afraid? Most definitely. I was scared, for certain. Indeed, it was fear that motivated me to head for the stairs in the first place - as I’m sure it motivated just about everyone else. But I saw no panic.
As I say just above, my viewpoint was limited to seeing the workers in a large office building on the same block as the explosion try to leave their building. I didn’t see everything, of course, though I’ve read a fair bit in the ensuing day that doesn’t contradict my intial impressions.
If you have a different take on what constitutes panic, obviously we may part ways here. But again I say, no one I saw did anything that made a scary, almost zero-information situation worse, and for that I am glad and proud of my fellow New Yorkers.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 3:08 pm ¶
David wrote:
Re Sarabeth’s comment #9: More than fair. Which is why I think a critical look at the media’s coverage is important here, and which led me to your blog today in the first place. I only watched a little bit of the news when I came home yesterday, mostly because I was annoyed that, even once it was established this was not a terrorist act, reporters kept asking questions like, “Did you THINK this was an act of terrorism?”
Obviously, the tradmed has a vested interest in hyping any fear/terror/panic angles - “if it bleeds, it leads,” as we all know. But I think, as John said above, there’s a huge gap between what we say on TV and what really happened. Thankfully, real live actual New Yorkers have a vested interest in NOT running around like chickens with their heads cut off, as much as the media might like us to. :)
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 3:12 pm ¶