What one needs to consider with this issue is that the news (and to extrapolate, the media in general) does not exist solely as an observer. News and media can also be used as a tool of manipulation, for causes good and bad.
It is fair to say that when it comes to news, people pay attention - whether it's the day-to-day weather, or a warning of imminent danger (eg. a severe weather warning), or whether there are long-term global issues such as the recent A(H1N1) outbreaks or the economic situation facing many countries.
Without giving any thought or regard to whether the information is true or not, people read and watch and listen, and they pay attention to what is being said - and accepting that information as fact, they then act on that information to their own interests.
We saw this when the first "panic mode" influenza stories were made public. Around the world - even in Australia, where there is yet to be any confirmed cases of A(H1N1) - sales of masks and antibiotics have soared. In the typical Australian influenza season, 10,000 courses of the antibiotic
Tamiflu are dispensed - 10,000 for the whole flu season. However, in the week to May 5 this year,
one hundred and twenty thousand courses were sold.
120,000 courses of antibiotics in
one week, versus 10,000 total during a normal flu season. Evidence on its own that people pay attention.
Other situations where people pay attention is the economy. As the US "subprime mortgage crisis" became public knowledge, people listened to the doomsayers in the media - and they acted. By mid-November 2008, the S&P 500 (an index which measures the combined value of 500 of the largest companies across the US' various stock exchanges) had
dropped over 52% from its October 2007 peak - such a drop had not been seen in the US stockmarket since the early years of the Great Depression.
Is the above all boring and monotinous? Probably. But it illustrates that when the media says something, people pay attention. And when the government (or even businesses) want people to think, say or do something en masse, they use the media as a tool to get their message across.
By publishing "panic mode" figures regarding the danger of A(H1N1), the public became cautious and started taking precautions on their own. These precautions may likely have helped to stop the spread of infection. Consider if people were completely unaware of the risks - crowded buses and trains and public places would be subject to the sneeze of an unknown infected person, and more people would have been exposed and likely infected. Instead, measures were taken to reduce the risk of transmitting infection, and we see this in the limited numbers of infection and very limited deaths in the US.
Don't think that everything governments do are evil - they do sometimes work for the good of their populations.
Swine Flu 
Linear Mode
