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One mistake is referred to as "Misleading Vividness". In general terms, it means "My next door neighbor just got mugged, so there must be a crime wave." It comes from the fact that we are conceptually myopic and tend to concentrate more on what we see than on what we know. A horrible crime next door is perceived as being more important than one which takes place across the country or on the other side of the world. It is natural, actually; it's an example of how our natural intuition steers us wrong. But it's unfortunate when the press falls for it, and it's happened twice now in the Afghan war. Both times what happened is that members of the press went where they shouldn't and got killed. That's not good. But are the deaths of four reporters really more important than the deaths of a hundred Northern Alliance troops, or a thousand Taliban soldiers? Why is it that reporter deaths are getting so much press? Two reasons, I think. First, they're westerners, which makes them seem closer to home than people who were already in Afghanistan. But more important is that they were reporters, and to the reporters who are writing the news for us, this subconsciously looms particularly large. Just as I'm more concerned when my next door neighbor gets mugged than when someone I don't know gets mugged, to reporters the death of a reporter (perhaps even of a friend) must loom larger than the death of a faceless nameless Afghan. So both cases have gotten more coverage than I think they really justify. I'm certainly not saying they should be ignored, but I'm not sure that they're remotely as important as things like whether and when Kunduz will fall. And they've been getting about the same amount of press time. (discussion in progress) |
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