Psychology

Ruscio argues that one of the main problems with the media is that news stories tend to be over-exaggerated for several reasons. First, media stories are exaggerated in order to gain advertising revenues. In fact, Ruscio argues that the media specifically picks certain stories that will be more likely to increase revenues, which means that mundane events or benign events are often ignored for disasters, national emergencies, and wars. Second, media stories tend to be exaggerated in the sense that only unusual occurrences and odd events are chosen for primetime news shows, and the importance of such events tend to be overblown to mass proportions. (Ruscio Chapter 1).

This is clearly seen in a 2004 study by Woo et al, which focuses upon the perceptions of parents whose children developed health problems after being vaccinated in comparison to parents whose children responded positively to being vaccinated, after the 2001 scare about vaccines potentially being one cause of Childhood Autism. In this study, Woo et al surveyed 124 parents who had reported their childs autism to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System or VAERS between 1990, and 2004. According to Woo et al, these parents were less likely to see childhood diseases that had vaccines as being a serious issue, and were less likely to allow their children to have further vaccines, even if these illnesses were viewed as a problem.

One of the main reasons that these parents seem to have such an issue with vaccinating their children is the media outrage that occurred when a small number of autism cases were reported in the medical research as being correlated to higher risks of autism and other health problems. The other major factor that played a role in determining whether or not parents who had reported a childs health condition to VAERS sought further vaccinations for their children was the correlation between the appearance of the symptoms and the children receiving a vaccination.

It is clear that the media had powerful role in the parents who participated in this study. The actual correlational study in showing a link between autism and vaccinations had little statistical significance and was based upon a very small sample of subjects. Yet the media took the results of this study and immediately started proclaiming that vaccinations caused autism. It is clear that the newspapers and magazines that these parents were reading were not credible sources for several reasons. First, as the original study showed only a correlation and had limited generalizability there was no definitive link between autism and vaccination. Second, since the original sample was so small to begin with this could be seen as one example of the Medias tendency to over-exaggerate the unusual, or the tragic.

Woo et al.s study definitely demonstrates that the media has a strong influence on how people view events that occur in the world around them. The parents who participated in this study reported that they had read about the original study in the popular media. The same popular media that has become known for exaggerating their stories for financial and ratings gains which casts any story popularized by them in doubt,

It can be concluded, that the influence of the media is problematic when it comes to certain things. For instance, the role it takes in publicizing medical studies. Reporters take no care, and have little understanding of research reports, or the different types of experimental design, and only choose to publicize medical and psychological studies that are controversial, strange, or tragic in some way. The media is a problem for the medical and psychological fields because credible reports of important discoveries rarely get publicized whereas the controversial studies with little significance make headlines.