Causes of Death: Official Statistics VS Media Share

The actual distribution of deaths is very different from the causes of death that the media talks about. Rare — but dramatic — events such as homicides and terrorism receive much more media coverage, despite being much smaller causes of death.

People who die from common health risks quickly become mere numbers. And those who die in rarer events have a face, a name, and a story that can be told. This makes people much more likely to click and read, making these stories ideal for the media to write about. And because media organizations need traffic and attention to survive, they and the public are stuck in a reinforcing feedback loop where rare events are always in the headlines and chronic problems get drowned out.

The information people are exposed to profoundly impacts how they perceive the world. If people are constantly bombarded with stories of the latest murders and crimes, they might easily think that these are happening more and more. On the other hand, if people don’t hear about what’s happening to heart disease rates, treatments, or the odds of surviving cancer, they might wrongly imagine that no progress has been made. Yet death rates from cancer and heart disease have fallen dramatically since the 1990s.