Ebola: Why the UK media panic? Because we like to be afraid

I was originally going to entitle this post 'Ebola, should we panic?' but I realised that only people with medical expertise can truly answer that question.

The tabloid front pages of the last few days have got increasingly hysterical on this issue. Horrifying details of the symptoms, fears of it spreading in Britain and demands for political action have been the leitmotifs of the coverage. It is, of course, a major health crisis in Africa, by any stretch of the imagination, but the potential for widespread infection and deaths here at home is minimal, just like SARS and bird flu, surely? As theonion.com has so presciently satirised the ebola vaccine is at least 50 white victims away. So, why the media panic?

When it comes to issues such as crime, disease, terrorism or tricky public policy issues such as immigration, the default media position is that of alarm, or even tabloid scaremongering. The more paranoid and Marxist among us, posit elaborate theories that it furthers the corporate interests of media owners to keep us scared and that encourages us to keep buying advertisers' products. I have never bought this theory. I have never met - or worked with - a journalist who has operated like that. Journalists may be venal and may have to toe the proprietors' editorial line, but they are not that calculating.

The fact is, that what is news is new. It is novel. It is different. Murders, pandemics, disasters are news precisely because they are deviations from the norm. This also explains other stories such as Ukip's media-driven rise. Ukip is new, it is different, it is box office; just like the SDP was 30 years ago.

Undoubtedly, on at least the single of issue of crime, tabloid sensationalism has fueled the fear. Home Office research in 2003 showed that tabloid readers' fear of crime was disproportionately higher than that of non-tabloid readers. I doubt that this has changed in 11 years.

It is not just the media ramping up the fear index. Politicians try to out do each other in 'demanding' measures that are increasingly 'robust'. We have a choice. We do not have to buy those newspapers. We do not have to vote for those politicians. But we do read those stories, we do click those links, we do call for action. Because, deep down, don't we all secretly like being a little bit scared?