Telling the difference between danger and fear

James Fallows notes: Bathtubs should be 365 times more frightening than sharks. So why aren’t they? From The Atlantic:

A few days ago I pointed out that yet another popular news item had described how frightened an airline passenger was, about a situation that was objectively not dangerous at all.”Yet another” because stories like this — there we were, about to die! — are journalistic staples, now as much as ever. (Two examples from the NYT, here and here.)

320px-White_shark.jpgIn part this reflects the bone-deep suspicion that people shouldn’t be sitting and reading in a tube 30,000 feet above the ground. In part, it’s the famous human difficulty of distinguishing things we’re scared of from things that really threaten us. On average, one American dies each day in a bathtub accident — and one American dies each year from a shark attack. Bathtubs should be 365 times as frightening as sharks, but it’s the reverse. We don’t have “Bathtub Week” on the Discovery Channel.

How do you see this relating to church news?

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