Why is Hollywood playing along on the Bird Flu hype?

[liberal N proud]

ABC will air an original movie tonight: Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America
CSI Miami last week had a cruise passenger they killed because they feared she had bird flu.
I saw previews for another TV series where bird flu was going to break out.
Local TV station news broadcast this AM they thought the bird flu could hit the US in 6 months. What takes place in the US in 6 months?

Why are they helping hype the fear?


Tin foil hat time here: What if they are building the hype on the bird flu so they can introduce some flu like agent into the population right before the election. Then they would need to cancel the elections for the publics safety. Think that is a little too far out there?

[bluestateguy]

1. Hollywood also played along with the "Y2K" nonsense

Some bullshit made for TV movie came out, and Oh my God, Y2K is going to destroy civilization!!

And what happened?

Well, some 105 year old woman got an invitation in the mail to sign up for kindergarten, but that was about it.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. I'm guessing it's the "Terror du Temps" that sells advertising.

Hollywood has enjoyed scaring people for profit since Day One:
Nosfertu (The Vampire)
King Kong
Frankenstein/Dracula
The Creature From the Black Lagoon
The Blob
The Birds
Psycho

What I resent is taking "Fatal Contact" out of context from a cheesy fictional presentation and making it into a docudrama on the scale of "The Day After" (Jason Robards, Steve Guttenberg, etc. in the 80s), making it more believable than the average horror film which viewers do not typically accept as potentially true.

[Junkdrawer]

3. They wouldn't cancel the elections, BUT it would provide great cover...

for a stolen election: "Well, all the polls are useless now..."

[greekspeak]

4. And hollywood is FULL of libruls!

:eyes:

[Vetinarii]

5. Well, duh...

In WW2 and the Cold War, there were innumerable propaganda films about spies, saboteurs and evil plots to destroy America.

Since the 1950s there have been films about the coming nuclear holocaust, alien invasions.

In the 1970s there was Watergate - conspiracies and coverups became fashionable, and Hollywood responded with "The Parallax View", "Coma", "Capricorn One" and a raft of conspiracy plots, of varying plausibility, that continued at least to 2001, when it suddenly became unpatriotic to question the government's motivations.

In the 1980s they discovered what they foolishly called terrorism, and that gave us everything from "Die Hard" to "The Sum of All Fears".

In the meantime, there have been uncountable movies about mutant insects, natural and unnatural disasters, disease outbreaks (with human-made, bio-engineered diseases recently moving to the fore).

Why on earth would you expect them not to play up bird flu?

[treestar]

6. People need to get the difference between movies and reality

Just because it is in a movie, does not mean it will happen.

In fact, Hollywood, by doing a movie about it, is trivializing it as entertainment.

[Maru Kitteh]

7. Money. n/t

[tlsmith1963]

8. It's Disgusting

When I first saw the ad for that movie, I was angry. ABC is helping Bush in keeping Americans scared. I've really grown weary of it. It's time for us to stop being scared & throw the jerks in the Bush admin. out. I'm sick of being afraid.

Tammy

[tanyev]

9. Because they love it when they get a few pats on the head

from someone in the Bush administration.

[Blue Diadem]

10. Our small local paper had a letter to the editor from health dept.

officials about that show. They cautioned people to not become alarmed & said it wasn't a documentary. In their opinions they felt the movie goes beyond the scope of even the worst-case scenario.

I was quite surprised they wrote the letter but yet relieved to know our locals realize there is an increasing amount of fear being spread. They did go on to tell people how to become informed and that by preparing for the potential problem of a pandemic, it would help in other emergency situations.

[MadHound]

11. Always remember that 90% of the media is controlled by five corporations

And those corporations will play ball with whomever is in power in order to further their bottom line. Thus, while real news of scandals, our eroding civil rights, and the disaster that the Iraqi war has turned into goes unreported or under reported, any propaganda put out by the administration is shoved down our throats like it was gospel. Witness how often US casualties(forget about Iraqi deaths) get little airplay, baseless pieces of so called news that promote fear and devisivness aren't just reported, they are played like a drum, long and loud.

One of the first things that Democrats should do when they regain control is to roll back the '96 Telecom Act and to restore the Fairness Doctrine. Sadly, being as we're living under the two party/same corporate master system of government, this probably won't happen.