I have a new App on my tablet called Earthquakes and Volcanoes. Do you know how many earthquakes there have been in the world in the last two hours? (at the time of writing!) Thirteen. None were over five on the Richter scale but still, measurable earthquakes.

Last night on the news we were watching the victims of the recent major earthquake on the Iran Iraq border in which over five hundred people were killed. Yet the media do not report the thirteen earthquakes in the last two hour. Why? Well obviously, minor earthquakes do not cause large loss of life and property and so, are not news.

It occurs to me that most ‘news’ is analogous to the reporting of earthquakes. Only the extreme stories are reported. It is not hard then to realise that by watching only news bulletins we can gain an extreme and unbalanced view of the world. No one intends this to happen (except in countries where the state control the media) but in the free press, only stories about the extreme are published.

There is an old saying that ‘one swallow does not make a summer’. We can all think of examples of the truth of this. Just because the new car has broken down once does not mean it is going to continually break down. Just because we had a bad day at the office does not mean we should resign. Aircraft do crash, but not often.

Mother Earth sustains these massive shocks on her tectonic boundaries constantly, but does not give up on keeping the lid on things. Imagine if we had had thirteen earthquakes the size of the one in the Middle East every two hours. We would change from living in a world where very occasionally horror and destruction hits communities somewhere in the world, to it being an hourly occurrence. The press would run out of superlatives.

In painting the occurrence of one unusual event in photographic detail, the press create two impressions at once. Firstly, that we live in a dangerous place and secondly that the risk to all of us is great. The first is true. The second is not. Newspapers do not provide each reader with a risk assessment for their situation. It would be impractical. But by not putting ourselves in the picture in a realistic way, we can become paranoid. Yes, earthquakes happen more frequently than we report to you, but most of them are harmless.

Consider crime and the fear of crime. The press in the United Kingdom report murders forensically but fail to point out how few happen each year. Neither do they reassure us that the victims of violent crime are generally young males. As people do not do their own research, elderly females ( the opposite of the real risk group ) live in fear in their own homes, don’t answer the door or go out at night.

If a political group has a message that is not being reported in the media, they might descend into extremism. Become a massive volcano and you are guaranteed world coverage. In the times of the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’ the UK government combated this by forbiddingthe  reporting of atrocities using what were called D-notices. The effect was to not throw petrol on the fire. Today however, I have to wonder how much the reporting of extreme news has contributed to misery, fear and at worst, depression.

The truth is that our houses are not going to fall down in an earthquake, we are not going to be murdered in our own homes, or die in a terrorist incident. And with that truth we should all sit back and agree with Louis Armstrong singing that song, ‘It’s a Wonderful World’. And you won’t read a statement like that in your daily paper.