EDITORIAL: Cable news spreading, exploiting Ebola fear

It turns out that Ebola is spreading like wildfire. At least among the cable news networks.

They have all caught the Ebola bug and are now transmitting the fear it engenders to millions of Americans. Fox, CNN, MSNBC are all engaged in saturation coverage of this latest portent of the apocalypse.

To ramp up the fear in order to carve out higher ratings for themselves, they need to divest themselves of certain things: proportionality, for one, and perspective, for another.

What do you think: Is the Ebola threat being blown out of proportion?

When you are manufacturing a bogeyman, the facts take a backseat to the hype. The facts tell us that Ebola is, indeed, a pretty nasty disease and that the number of people who have succumbed to it was 4,447 as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the World Health Organization.

But the vast majority of those of victims are in West Africa. Here at home, the death toll has reached ... one. Two health-care workers in Dallas who helped treat the victim have tested positive for the disease and are being treated.

Surely, all necessary precautions should be taken to prevent the spread of the virus in America. But let's all get a grip here.

The chances of you a) getting Ebola and b) dying from it are less than remote. It may be cold comfort to learn that there are a bunch of other diseases that are far more likely to kill you, including the flu. Each year, up to 60 million Americans will come down with influenza, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Of those, 200,000 will wind up hospitalized. From 1976 to 2006, an average of 25,000 people, mostly older Americans, died each year from flu-related disease.

When are CNN, MSNBC and FOX going to mount their round-the-clock coverage of the plague of influenza stalking our nation and particularly our senior citizens? Don't hold your breath.

In the race for ratings and market share, the exotic, foreign killer will nearly always beat out the mundane. And speaking of exotic foreign killers, when the cable news networks take their eyes off the Ebola ball for a moment, it's only to pick up the ISIS ball and tell us of the imminent threat of those barbarians at America's gate.

It turns out that fear-mongering translates not only into dollars and cents for news-gathering organizations, but also allows talking heads to politicize the issue. That's certainly true with ISIS as criticism mounts about just how badly the administration misjudged its threat.

Politicians, too, including President Barack Obama, have sought to exploit the fear of Ebola for political purposes. Obama, apparently stung by criticism that he is disengaged, canceled a Wednesday appearance at a fundraiser to brief his cabinet on the Ebola "crisis."

There is no stopping cable media, but the president could combat the growing fear in America by telling the nation, "Keep calm and carry on. And get your flu shots."