Do News Media Kill? How a Biased News Reality can Overshadow Real Societal Risks, The Case of Aviation and Road Traffic Accidents

Abstract

Abstract Is irrational risk-avoiding behavior related to news media’s heightened attention for the negative and exceptional? Based on the theoretical approaches of mediatization and cultivation, it is hypothesized how news media can present an overly negative and biased reality that can have a severe impact on society. Focusing on the case of travel accidents, we argue that a disproportional increase in news attention for low-probability high-consequence aviation accidents can distort audiences’ risk perceptions such that driving is inaccurately perceived as a safer transportation alternative to flying, with potentially harmful consequences. This study accordingly documents results from time-series analyses (1996–2017) on US media attention for aviation and road accidents related to real-world data on travel behavior and fatal accidents. The over-time patterns expose how news media follow their own mediatized logic and reality: Negative incidents—i.e., both aviation and road accidents—become more prominent in the news over time, rather than accurately reflecting real-world trends. Next, since air travel is statistically the safest transportation mode, disproportionate attention for aviation accidents is argued to especially create a problematic distorted worldview among audiences. Accordingly, findings show how more media attention for aviation accidents is related to relatively more road traffic and more fatal road accidents in the subsequent months. We conclude that the media’s systematic overrepresentation of rare aviation accidents can overshadow the more substantial risk of (long-distance) driving. This paper illustrates how a distorted media reality can potentially result in severe consequences in light of audiences’ ill-informed fear perceptions and irrational risk-avoiding behavior.