The endless apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding Net Neutrality and many other tech policy debates proves there’s no downside to gloom-and-doomism as a rhetorical strategy. Being a techno-Jeremiah nets one enormous media exposure and even when such a person has been shown to be laughably wrong, the press comes back for more. Not only is there is no penalty for hyper-pessimistic punditry, but the press actually furthers the cause of such “fear entrepreneurs” by repeatedly showering them with attention and letting them double-down on their doomsday-ism. Bad news sells, for both the pundit and the press.

But what is most remarkable is that the press continues to label these preachers of the techno-apocalypse as “experts” despite a track record of failed predictions. I suppose it’s because, despite all the failed predictions, they are viewed as thoughtful & well-intentioned. It is another reminder that John Stuart Mill’s 1828 observation still holds true today: “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.”

Additional Reading:

• Regarding the Use of Apocalyptic Rhetoric in Policy Debates (10/29/14)
• The Problem with “Pessimism Porn” (5/23/14)
• Journalists, Technopanics & the Risk Response Continuum (7/15/12)
• How & Why the Press Sometimes “Sells Digital Fear” (4/8/12)
• law review article: “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle” (2013)

[Based on forthcoming article in the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology, Vol. 14 Issue 1, Winter 2013, http://mjlst.umn.edu]

I hope everyone caught these recent articles by two of my favorite journalists, Kashmir Hill (“Do We Overestimate The Internet’s Danger For Kids?”) and Larry Magid (“Putting Techno-Panics into Perspective.”) In these and other essays, Hill and Magid do a nice job discussing how society responds to new Internet risks while also explaining how those risks are often blown out of proportion to begin with.

Both Hill and Magid are rarities among technology journalists in that they spend more time debunking fears rather than inflating them. Whether its online safety, cybersecurity, or digital privacy, we all too often see journalists distorting or ignoring how humans find constructive ways to cope with technological change. Why do journalists fail to make that point? I suppose it is because bad news sells–even when there isn’t much to substantiate it.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about “moral panics” and “technopanics” in recent years (here’s a compendium of roughly two dozen essays I’ve penned on the topic) and earlier this year I brought all my work together in an 80-page paper entitled, “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle.”

In that paper, I identified several reasons why pessimistic, fear-mongering attitudes often dominate discussions about the Internet and information technology. I began by noting that the biggest problem is that for a variety of reasons, humans are poor judges of risks to themselves or those close to them. But I identified other explanations for why human beings are predisposed toward pessimism and are risk-averse, including:

• Generational Differences
• Hyper-Nostalgia, Pessimistic Bias, and Soft Ludditism
• Bad News Sells: The Role of the Media, Advocates, and the Listener
• The Role of Special Interests and Industry Infighting
• Elitist Attitudes among Academics and Intellectuals
• The Role of “Third-Person-Effect Hypothesis”

You can read my paper for fuller descriptions of each point. But let me return to my primary concern here regarding the role that the media plays in the process. It seems logical why journalists inflate fears: In an increasingly crowded and cacophonous modern media environment, there’s a strong incentive for them to use fear to grab attention. But why are we, the public, such eager listeners and so willing to lap up bad news, even when it is overhyped, exaggerated, or misreported?

“Negativity bias” certainly must be part of the answer. Michael Shermer, author of The Believing Brain, notes that psychologists have identified “negativity bias” as “the tendency to pay closer attention and give more weight to negative events, beliefs, and information than to positive.” Negativity bias, which is closely related to the phenomenon of “pessimistic bias,” is frequently on display in debates over online child safety, digital privacy, and cybersecurity.

But even with negativity bias at work, what I still cannot explain is why so many of these inflated fears exists when we have centuries of experience and empirical results that prove humans are able to again and again adapt to technological change. We are highly resilient, adaptable mammals. We learn to cope.

In my paper, I try to develop a model for how humans deal with new technological risks. I identify four general groups of responses and place them along a “risk response continuum”:

1. Prohibition: Prohibition attempts to eliminate potential risk through suppression of technology, product or service bans, information controls, or outright censorship.
2. Anticipatory Regulation: Anticipatory regulation controls potential risk through preemptive, precautionary safeguards, including administrative regulation, government ownership or licensing controls, or restrictive defaults. Anticipatory regulation can lead to prohibition, although that tends to be rare, at least in the United States.
3. Resiliency: Resiliency addresses risk through education, awareness building, transparency and labeling, and empowerment steps and tools.
4. Adaptation: Adaptation involves learning to live with risk through trial-and-error experimentation, experience, coping mechanisms, and social norms. Adaptation strategies often begin with, or evolve out of, resiliency-based efforts.

For reasons I outline in the paper, I believe that it almost always makes more sense to use bottom-up resiliency and adaptation solutions instead of top-down anticipatory regulation or prohibition strategies. And, more often than not, that’s what we eventually opt for as a society, at least when it comes to information technology. Sure, you can find plenty of examples of knee-jerk prohibition and regulatory strategies being proposed initially as a response to an emerging technology. In the long-run, however–and sometimes even in the short-run–we usually migrate down the risk response continuum and settle into resiliency and adaptation solutions. Sometimes we adopt those approaches because we come to understand they are more sensible or less costly. Other times we get there only after several failed experiments with prohibition and regulation strategies.

I know I am being a bit too black and white here. Sometimes we utilize hybrid approaches–a bit of anticipatory regulation with a bit of resiliency, for example. We use such an approach for both privacy and security matters, for example. But I have argued in my work that the sheer velocity of change in the information age makes it less and less likely that anticipatory regulation strategies–and certainly prohibition strategies–will work in the long-haul. In fact, they often break down very rapidly, making it all the more essential that we begin thinking seriously about resiliency strategies as soon as we are confronted with new technological risks. Adaptation isn’t usually the correct strategy right out of the gates, however. Just saying “learn to to live with it” or “get over it” won’t work as a short-term strategy, even if that’s exactly what will happen over the long-term. But resiliency strategies often help us get to adaption strategies and solutions more quickly.

Anyway, back to journalists and fear. It strikes me that sharp journalists like Hill and Magid just seem to get everything I’m saying here and they weave these insights into all their reporting. By why do so few others? Again, I suppose it is because the incentives are screwy here and make it so that even those reporters who know better will sometimes use fear-based tactics to sell copy. But I am still surprised by how often even respected mainstream media establishments play this game.

In any event, those others reporters need to learn to give humans a bit more credit and acknowledge that (a) we often learn to cope with technological risks quite rapidly and (b) sometimes those risks are greatly inflated to begin with.

My friend Pablo Chavez, Managing Policy Counsel of Google, brings to my attention the fact that the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act (H.R. 3714) was pending before the House today, and I’m happy to note that it passed late this afternoon. The bill, which is co-sponsored by Reps. Schiff and Pence in the House and is co-sponsored by Sen. Dodd in the Senate, would expand the examination of press freedom worldwide in the State Department’s annual human rights report and establishes a grant program aimed at broadening and strengthening media independence internationally. Specifically, the bill would identify “countries in which there were violations of freedom of the press, including direct physical attacks, imprisonment, indirect sources of pressure, and censorship by governments, military, intelligence, or police forces, criminal groups, or armed extremist or rebel groups.”

This is a worthwhile goal and a fine tribute to a great journalist, a first-class human being, and someone I was honored to briefly count as a friend in this world before he was murdered by terrorist scum in 2002.  Indeed, some of my fondest memories from the mid-90s are of the times I would meet Danny Pearl for beers at Cap City Brewery or other bars in downtown Washington, DC. He was an up-and-coming star reporter covering telecommunications policy for The Wall Street Journal and I was just starting to make a name for myself as a policy geek in this field. Because I was working very closely with a number of Hill offices at that time and helping to craft some of what eventually went into the Telecom Act of 1996, Danny knew I had a lot of good inside information. And like any great journalist, he knew that enough beers and late-night banter would eventually get me to spill the beans about something I wasn’t suppose to be sharing with a reporter!  I didn’t mind being an “unnamed source” in a couple of his stories, and the fact that he sometimes quoted me in others gave me and my career an unbelievable boost. I still remember sending my family the first big WSJ story I was ever quoted in. It was a piece Danny wrote back in ’94.

Everyone now knows the tragic story of how Danny was abducted and murdered by terrorists in 2002. I remember how numb I went when I heard the news and still find it hard to fathom how such a gentle, down-to-earth soul could have been viciously murdered.

I remember saying goodbye to him at a going-away party when he was heading over to the Journal’s London office back in ’96 and telling him I expected him to buy me the first round of beers at my favorite British pub when I made it back over there. But we never connected in London and we gradually lost touch a few years later. That’s always been a reminder to me to not take anything for granted in this world. My grandmother had always taught me to treat each moment with someone as if it was the last time you might ever see them again. I never really appreciated that advice until the moment I heard of Danny’s death and realized we’d never share a beer again. Still makes me sick to even think about it.

Danny was a first-class guy and a real joy to be around. I didn’t know him for very long but he left a lasting impression on me and, as an old journalism student myself, I always tell young or aspiring journalists to go back and read Danny’s great writing for an example of how it should be done. He was a real pro and had that rare gift of being able to take the driest, most arcane topic on Earth and turn it into something engaging, even entertaining.

Hopefully this bill named in his honor will help America promote freedom of the press and human expression worldwide while also helping to better protect journalists who are threatened by tyranny in all its ugly forms as they pursue truth on our behalf.  That would have made Danny happy.

P.S. Check out the Daniel Pearl Foundation website for more information about how his family and others are furthering the ideals that inspired Danny’s life and work.

Yo people, help me build this list of the best Internet and digital technology (“Info-Tech”) policy reporters on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/AdamThierer/infotech-policy-reporters/members

I’m trying to make sure I’m following the best reporters out there who cover public policy developments related to the Internet, cyberlaw, digital media, and so on. I’ve got just under 50 reporters on there currently, but I’m sure I’m missing some.  I would love to get some other suggestions about who is missing from my list, and I encourage others to follow my list if they find it a useful way to keep track of some of the best reporters on this beat.

Incidentally, I do understand it is hard to define exactly who counts as a “reporter” these days, but my general rule of thumb here is that (I think) almost everybody on my list actually gets paid to write about these issues.  In other words, I kept tech policy bloggers off this list. There’s just too many of them to count.