TV REVIEW : ‘Scaring’ Raises Interesting Questions

“Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?,” an ABC News special that examines our “fears” about pollution, crime, cancer and other topics, goes mano a mano with some favorite targets--the media and big government to name just two--and manages to land some decent blows. But there are enough lapses on the part of the program’s writers and producers that all sides emerge bloodied.

Host John Stossel is credited as one of four writers, and since this is billed as “his first original prime-time special,” three years in the making, we’ll let him take the heat (though he does indict himself along with the rest of the media for distorting reality and serves up clips from his past as proof).

The show’s best segment is a look at the crime rate and the feeding frenzy over gore that passes for the nightly news, plus the public’s reaction to same. Surprise: The crime rate is essentially flat. No surprise: That isn’t what most people think. Stossel rightly skewers the media for shoddy reporting and reams politicians for riding the issue.

Unfortunately, moral issues take a back seat here and throughout “Scaring”; something’s amiss with a society that has 24,000 murders a year, even if the numbers are flat in relation to population growth.

The next segment looks at pollution and toxic waste. Stossel relies heavily on risk analysis here, asking what is justified in terms of cost and benefit, arguing that we waste billions on “unneeded” regulations and cleanup. This may be true, but Stossel has stacked the deck with experts making his case (and the moral equation again gets short shrift).

The segment is also weakened by a setup with Ralph Nader in which the consumer activist is made to look silly, giving one-sentence answers to a Stossel peppering him with “watch out for poultry” and “carpets are dangerous.”

The Nader circus sets the show’s increasingly hysterical tone, the same tone that Stossel decried earlier as the media at their worst.

Perspective is everything--some things scare the bejabbers out of us yet are relatively harmless, others are ignored yet kill us with quiet efficiency--and Stossel is clearly on to something. Our money could be spent better, with greater benefits for a greater number of people. But who will spend it and who will determine where it goes? Do we simply exchange one set of bureaucrats and experts for another set? “Scaring” raises some important questions but leaves too many others hanging.

* “Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?” airs at 10 tonight on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42). A follow - up discussion with officials and activists airs at 11:30 p.m. on “Nightline.”