Line #37 Main/MediaScaremongering


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5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_fear_8896.jpg]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:500pt headline. On a word processor, this setting is called [[TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed Daily Planet]].]]
7
8	->''"I JUST WATCHED A CABLE NEWS CHANNEL! EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE!"''
9	-->-- '''Caboose''', ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'' Fire Safety PSA
10
11	Oh NO! It's the [[TheBlackDeath BLACK]] POLIO AIDS ANTHRAX MONKEY-POX SARS BIRD SWINE ZIKA EBOLA [[UsefulNotes/CovidPandemic CORONAVIRUS]]-19 [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishFlu FLU!]] Wait. It's actually ACID [=RAINing=] [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot AIRBORNE SAR-AIDS-CANCER]] over THE WHOLE OF NORTH AMERICA as a distraction for a SINISTER TERRORIST [[SatanicPanic SATANIC]] PLOT to ASSASSINATE UNWED TEENAGE MOTHERS by INNOCENT CHILDREN mind-controlled by [[MurderSimulators VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES]] and the [[DrugsAreBad LSD SOLD IN PRESCHOOL PLAYGROUNDS]]... [[OverlyLongGag and so on]].
12
13	In fiction, the media is often depicted as relentlessly fear-mongering for ratings, and will take any story or event, no matter how innocuous or harmless, and make it look like TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. In the case of real-life media drumming up fear, this one goes hand-in-hand with the MadeForTVMovie which sensationalizes the topic of discussion. Whatever the latest media-induced paranoia is, like [[RippedFromTheHeadlines crime]], [[DisasterMovie typhoons]] and [[ArsonMurderAndLifesaving the best show on Earth]], we're going to get a show or special report about it. Think EverythingTryingToKillYou applied to RealLife and you have the idea.
14
15	If children are allegedly in danger, then it's a case of ThinkOfTheChildren (with HarmfulToMinors being when it is ''[[ProperlyParanoid actually]]'' dangerous to children). If it's about new technology, then it's probably because ScienceIsBad. If it's a new minority or subculture, then lock the doors and hide your daughters -- it's the SubcultureOfTheWeek! Expecting volcanic eruptions in the midwest? Then it's likely a DisasterMovie. New diseases or health issues like high cholesterol and cancerous artificial sweetener? Then it's probably a ''Hallmark Channel'' MadeForTVMovie about a [[ThePollyanna Pollyanna]] and her family going through something truly {{Glurge}}-y.
16
17	Often involves a CluelessAesop. May evoke PoesLaw if its parody status is unknown. LetNoCrisisGoToWaste is often implied or stated to be the reason for telling people to panic.
18
19	Compare IfItBleedsItLeads. Contrast BystanderSyndrome, when situations that people should be rightly concerned about are dismissed as nothing important. See also: AxesAtSchool, DisasterMovie, {{Glurge}}, NewMediaAreEvil, PaedoHunt, RippedFromTheHeadlines, SubcultureOfTheWeek, TabloidMelodrama, TheNewRockAndRoll, WesternTerrorists.
20
21	----
22	!!Examples:
23	[[foldercontrol]]
24
25	[[folder:Advertising]]
26	* [[OmnipresentTropes This is such a common advertising trope]] that listing each occurrence would eat up an entire page of its own. In fact, one of the most basic ploys in advertising is to convince people that the lack of their product/failure to vote for their candidate/etcetera will RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER and lead to [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt THE END OF THE WORLD]]!!! Subversions, aversions, and/or deconstructions are much less common and far more interesting, so please post only them or the most extreme examples of this trope.
27	* Played straight: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkWAhuXtalw Vote for me or you'll get nuked!]] The ad was only aired once and his campaign got criticized for it, but it helped UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson win the 1964 Presidential election.
28	[[/folder]]
29
30	[[folder:Comic Books]]
31	* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan:'' The ''Daily Bugle'' is almost never without a banner headline proclaiming how the latest thing to hit New York is somehow, inevitably, Spider-Man's latest villainous scheme. Bank robbery? Spider-Man. Alien invasion? Spider-Man! Bad weather? ''SPIDER-MAN!''
32	** Though one issue of ''ComicBook/Hawkeye2012'' has a non-Spidey banner headline... still proclaiming doom and terror.
33	[[/folder]]
34
35	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
36	* ''Film/FatalContactBirdFluInAmerica'' was a MadeForTVMovie about Bird Flu [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin coming to America]], while, at that exact same time, suddenly mutating into a form more easily communicable to and between humans. On the inverse side, very few people realize that Swine Flu actually ''is'' a pandemic already, because the definition of pandemic doesn't actually include death toll in the criteria, just how much it's spread and how hard it is to stop it from spreading further. The fact that it's spread just about everywhere but proven no more lethal than the regular flu is probably why a similar movie doesn't exist for it.
37	* ''Film/ReeferMadnessTheMusical'': The Lecturer says "When danger's near, exploit their fear." The one parent who objects to these RedScare tactics is labeled un-American.
38	* Creator/MichaelMoore:
39	** ''Film/BowlingForColumbine'': Seen in a news segments montage during the film. Although he is not quite as scathing towards them as the NRA or gun manufacturers, Moore criticizes the news media for stoking non-stop fear to boost ratings, and sees this as a major contributing factor to the number of gun deaths in the United States.
40	** ''Film/Fahrenheit911'': Moore replays a female scream after images of destruction to emphasize how the government exploited the 9/11 attacks to manipulate people.
41	* Pretty much the whole point of ''Film/TheHost2006'' was satirizing this. Giant tadpole running around Seoul, eating people? It must be carrying A HIDEOUS NEW DISEASE! Let us completely focus on this possibility, and ignore the fact that it's eating people!
42	* PlayedForLaughs in ''Theatre/TheMusicMan''. Salesman "Professor" Harold Hill's standard procedure is to work up a town into a frenzy by turning some trivial incident into a full-blown moral panic, so he can sell them on the idea of starting a children's band (and buy instruments from him).
43	-->Oh yes, we got trouble! Right here in River City! With a capital '''T''' and that rhymes with '''P''' and that stands for '''POOL!'''
44	* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(film) Rollover]]''. The public panics and riots after banks fail worldwide.
45	* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_(1995_film) Night Watch]]'' (1995). After the Hong Kong stock market computers are destroyed by a virus, economic chaos spreads across the globe. The stockbroker that is interviewed says: "Once Joe Average decides the market's unstable, they want out, at any price. They were telling me sell, sell, sell; but nobody's buying." Another report says the market has fallen 3000 points with no end in sight.
46	%%* Ra's al Ghul's in ''Film/BatmanBegins''. %%Ra's al Ghul's what?
47	-->"Gentlemen, time to spread the word. And the word is ''panic''."
48	* ''Film/MazesAndMonsters'' was a movie made to illustrate to parents the dangers of TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons and how it could drive kids insane, to commit murder and then suicide. It was entirely based on an urban legend. There are quite a few accounts of active Dungeons and Dragons players who credit this movie for ''discovering the game'', as they were not aware that it existed until this movie got their parents to [[DontDoThisCoolThing warn them of its dangers]] and [[ForbiddenFruit willfully seek out what sounded like an exciting adventure.]]
49	[[/folder]]
50
51	[[folder:{{Literature}}]]
52	* Parodied in ''Literature/TheAreasOfMyExpertise'', when one character is smugly worried that terrorists will attack the Mall of America.
53	-->"You know what?" I say. "Fuck you."
54	* ''Literature/StateOfFear'', as [[Quotes/StateOfFear quoted]], manages to make a good point about this despite being mostly an AuthorTract about why Creator/MichaelCrichton thought GlobalWarming was a sham.
55	* ''Street Ninja,'' arguably a self-defense guide, tries to play up the idea that every gangster, skinhead, and drug dealer is killing each other so they can have the honor of killing you, personally. To protect yourself learn the secrets of the ninja. It says things like it's impractical to dress up in body armor...[[HypocriticalHumor then suggests how to make homemade body armor.]]
56	%%* There is a book called ''Big Porn Inc'' which serves to portray the most extreme, degraded adult material as the norm, with anyone who even looks at a naughty picture is into child and animal abuse and snuff, and the women working in the industry are abused. The authors claim not to be ultra left-wing conservative religious however positive reviews are met with comments from them as, "Praise the Lord, another soul saved!"
57	[[/folder]]
58
59	[[folder:Live Action TV]]
60	* ''Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura'': Every episode is about some [[OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness threatening conspiracy]] with nefarious plans that always involve massive harm to the human population. The show will run clips of disasters while the narrator informs us that we'll die any day now thanks to yet another paranoid conspiracy.
61	* The ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' takes on a TV reporter who makes a career out of this in "[[Recap/LeverageS02E05TheThreeDaysOfTheHunterJob The Three Days of the Hunter Job]]". She actually turns down a fake story they feed her about secret terrorist prisons in the US because she doesn't think it will scare her viewers enough.
62	* Creator/StephenColbert is [[http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=82944&title=Scary-Stephen proud to be a fearmonger.]]
63	* ''Series/MockTheWeek'' also ran a story about Bird Flu, showing the scare-mongering of the English media. Also from the show is a rather famous monologue by Russell Howard about [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbWiysSqKRA scaremongering in British newspapers]].
64	* The Creator/AnimalPlanet series ''Series/{{Infested}}'' makes it look like infestations are caused by unstoppable pest species that will overwhelm the people dealing with said pests. In reality, such infestations are rare and most infestations can be treated rather efficiently.
65	** A couple of episodes have focused on [[BatOutOfHell bats]]. Said episodes went out of their way to remind people "Bats have rabies! Your children could be in danger!". While rabid bats are ''very'' dangerous, you're more likely to be bitten by a rabid dog due to bats being nocturnal and encounters with them being quite rare.
66	* ''Tonight'', an ITV Documentary/news show, swings between this mode and sensible, reasoned attitudes - if it's a subject like banking, petrol crisis, the war in Libya, then they'll have ShownTheirWork, but if it comes to TheInternet or NewMediaAreEvil, then You Can Panic Now is in full effect.
67	* Inverted on ''Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook'' with a sketch about the news declaring that major disasters, explosions, and serial killings are all "fine" because they're over now, or because there isn't any violence except in the few minutes the serial killer is actually murdering someone, so there's no need to worry at all and it's all fine. However, their preview of the next day's newspaper headlines takes a shot at the ''Daily Mail's'' habit of playing the trope straight with its headline "Everything's fine, ''fear it, fear it''."
68	* ''Series/DropTheDeadDonkey''. When Globelink News decide to make a crimewatch program, Gus Hedges assures the police liaison officer that it's not going to increase the public's fear of crime for cheap ratings. Cue the title sequence showing a couple moving fearfully through a darkened street, while an ominous voiceover accompanied by creepy music tells how crime is lurking everywhere, waiting to strike... The music stops as the couple make it to their car, lock the doors and sigh with relief, only for a blood-stained man wielding a huge knife to [[DangerTakesABackseat rise up from the backseat]]. We then cut to a '[[BlatantLies recreation]]' of a postal robbery, which involves grinning hoodlums knocking an old lady's teeth out and [[LudicrousGibs splattering a clerk against a wall with a shotgun]].
69	[[/folder]]
70
71	[[folder:Music]]
72	* The entire point of Music/{{Eminem}}'s song "Without Me" is to parody this trope. Within the song, he makes a TakeThat at the FCC, teases paranoid parents that he's "infecting in your kids' ears", and invokes TheNewRockAndRoll trope by alluding to the fact that the MoralGuardians also reacted with You Can Panic Now when Elvis premiered.
73	[[/folder]]
74
75	[[folder:NewspaperComics]]
76	* Parodied in a ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' strip where Calvin's dad was watching "Eyewitness Action News", which aimed to tell its audience ''why YOU should be paralyzed with helpless fear!"
77	* This is a common subject in ''ComicStrip/{{Candorville}}'', as part of its general dislike of "[[OldMediaAreEvil Mainstream Media]]." Typically, honest information is presented, but certain panic-inducing words are [[PaintingTheMedium written larger than others]].
78	* Though not technically in featured in a ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' strip, Scott Adams has [[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964934001/fact-checking-adams-law-of-slow-moving-disasters noted]] that whenever humanity has become aware of a serious problem years in advance, it has been averted. When the PowersThatBe said, "Panic!", people went out and '''solved the problem.'''
79	-->Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the '''general public''' saw coming, ''with at least a ten-year warning'', and it actually happened as predicted?
80	[[/folder]]
81
82	[[folder:Video Games]]
83	* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto:'' The radio news tends to run along these lines. ''San Andreas'' has WC-TR with its host declaring things like "IS SKATEBOARDING MAKING YOUR SON GAY?"
84	* ''VideoGame/WeBecomeWhatWeBehold'' has this as a central concept. It puts the player behind a camera of a news site photographer, who starts out taking pictures of interesting things. But then the headlines start becoming more inflammatory, stoking tensions between the two groups in the game further and further until everything eventually goes to Hell.
85	-->'''News ticker:''' BE SCARED. BE ANGRY.
86	[[/folder]]
87
88	[[folder:Webcomics]]
89	* ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'': During the Storm Breaker Saga, the evil book (The Book of E-Ville) goes missing on the battlefield between good and evil. The monk who'd had custody of the book tells everyone not to panic and it has to be there somewhere -- when it turns up in the hands of one of the story's biggest idiots. The monk reverses course. [[http://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?chapter=14#1999-07-28 Seen here in the archives.]]
90	[[/folder]]
91
92	[[folder:Web Original]]
93	* A RunningGag at ''Website/{{Fark}}''. Submitted headlines for ridiculous scaremongering stories usually include the line [[http://www.fark.com/farq/farkisms.shtml#EVERYBODY_PANIC.21 EVERYBODY PANIC]] at the end.
94	* "You gonna die! Mad-Bird-Cow-Flu Disease gonna kill ya!" -- [[http://ranting-gryphon.com/Audio/Audio.htm 2, the Ranting Gryphon]] ''News'' rant. (NSFW due to {{Cluster F Bomb}}s)
95	* {{Parodied\|Trope}} by ''Website/CollegeHumor'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XTwWqzKeXc&ob=av3e here.]] Set to Music/{{REM}}'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", they showcase basically every ratings-driven media panic frenzy of the past 10-15 years, including [[MillenniumBug Y2K]], [[MayanDoomsday 2012]], [[PostPeakOil Peak Oil]], terrorist attacks, GlobalWarming, and the imminent ZombieApocalypse, RobotWar, and AlienInvasion.
96	* The ''Blog/ScarfolkCouncil'' would like to remind you that the small humanoids living in your home and eating your food may not be your children, that the tall humanoids who live in your house and feed you may not be your parents, and that foreigners may be stealing your thoughts, so you should [[BigBrotherIsWatching surrender them to the Scarfolk Council for safe keeping]].
97	* {{Parodied\|Trope}} in ''WebVideo/SomeMoreNews'' with their "No More Boar" series of videos, which, similarly with Creator/StephenColbert and his bears, attempts to 'awaken' America to the threat of radioactive, teleporting boar planning to KillAndReplace humanity. ([[BlatantLies Any rhetorical devices in these segments also sometimes used to demonize 'other' groupings in other ideologically aligned media is purely coincidental.]])
98	[[/folder]]
99
100	[[folder:Western Animation]]
101	* The parents in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', frequently.
102	* From ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
103	** One episode features a hidden media conspiracy to actually release a disease and do reports on it blaming the imminent outbreak on cats.
104	** In "Homer the Vigilante", Kent Brockman's initial report on the string of cat burglaries ends with him asking a professor if the town should panic. He nonchalantly agrees that they should. Later, Kent brings in the same professor after a large number of townspeople start searching for the cat burglar's loot.
105	--->'''Kent Brockman:''' Hordes of panicky people seem to be evacuating the town for some unknown reason. Professor, without knowing precisely ''what'' the danger ''is'', would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?\
106	'''Professor:''' Mmm, yes, I would, Kent.
107	* In the first episode of ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'', the eponymous characters are mistaken for invading aliens (ItMakesSenseInContext...more or less). The radio announcement to this effect concludes with the line, "This is not a play, repeat, not a play. Feel free to panic."
108	* In the ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' episode "Nancy Does Dallas," Nancy Gribble turns a fluff piece about a kid bringing his pet to school into a horror story about the school's lack of security, by hypothesizing what would've happened if the boy had been an intruder and the pet a loaded gun. The story gets Nancy noticed by a major news network and everyone aside from Hank freaks out, with Hank repeatedly stating nothing bad actually happened.
109	[[/folder]]
110	----
111	There are ''no more examples!'' '''YOU CAN PANIC NOW!'''

Context Main / MediaScaremongering