News burnout

Using the story of the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf as a stepping off point, I want to illustrate two situations in modern day politics where this children’s story comes into play, excuse the pun. Assume you are in charge of the warning siren in your city. You know that if you fail to sound the warning and a tornado hits, you are big trouble but if you sound it at every dark cloud you will be safe. The result is that after a while no one pays any attention to the siren. The second example is cable news. When a problem comes up the news is focused on this problem to the exclusion of all else. When this news cycle runs its course, usually with a week or two unless a new problem pops up and then that is the news. This results in every problem becoming a crisis and the people having to deal with one crisis after another just become immune to whatever. Who cares about the Arab Spring, the bombing of Libya, the VA, the Ukraine, ISIS, the beheadings and now we have Ebola. Each of these was portrayed as crises of monumental importance. We are suffering from news burnout.