Bee T r avel
Don't let media hinder travel plans
CHRISTINE HICKSUSTA Travel
While there are certainly prudent reasons not to travel to select square miles of the globe,

there are times when I feel the media skew has gone overboard. Such scares set some would-be tourists back on their hiking boots, giving them just the motive necessary to postpone especially preliminary and perhaps even permanently their travel plans. I think it's time to review, as one media reporter says, "the rest of the story."

I will not argue one whit about travel to Israel or Lebanon. And it's not worth my time today to wax over hotspots political that remain off-limits...like Cuba, North Korea, or Iraq. Indeed, common sense would cross Afghaniand sister "-stans" off any traveler's itinerary. Indeed, media skew has little to do with downturns in tourism to places such as these. Indeed, the laws of predictability hold some merit here, past behaviors holding true in these places for a number of years running.

What I find consistently distressing is the "like" syndrome that at times assumes a life of its own when a disaster strikes. When, for example, Hurricane Katrina struck, every tropical storm that followed had, at that moment in time seen through the media's eye, the potential for similar destruction. When one tsunami struck, several others got "anticipated." When illness strikes a cruise ship or someone "goes missing" off one of them, the news is full of near misses, pouncing on fellow passengers willing to crucify the line or the entire industry for their few moments of B-roll on a television station somewhere. Sure, the event itself is news. The media, like every bad tabloid, then pursues cataclysmic patterns where none exists.

Katrina was singular. Wars are unique. Epidemics are extraordinary. There is no predictability of the next abduction, disappearance, earthquake, tsunami, flood, drought, or military coup, except to say that somewhere, sometime it will likely happen again.

These "like" stories ultimately crush under the impossible weight of unfulfilled speculation. There isn't a next hurricane or tsunami or epidemic like the one that just happened. The media will put their disaster file away, and drag it out at the next spectacular and similar disaster, at a time and place generally far removed, in an attempt, once again, to draw predictions and conclusions about them.

You can't stay home because of disasters. To do so puts your life experiences in the hands of quacks. Foregoing statistical data, it remains that life is unpredictable. I am reminded of an episode on the old sitcom, Gomer Pyle. Sergeant Carter has just lost his girlfriend, and begun to wax philosophically. "Life is like...this napkin," he says. Life becomes like anything he sees or puts his hands on. Truth is life is like all of it, and none of it. It's up to you whether you are the eaten or the diner.

Statistically, there's a lot of room between where you are now and your final destination. Don't let some chump on the media's payroll scare you into staying where you are now. The greater risk is never having taken any at all.

(Christine Hicks-Usta has enjoyed more than 30 years of globetrotting as a member of the travel industry in various capacities. Direct questions to her at Bee Group Newspapers, P.O. Box 150, Buffalo, N.Y. 14231-0150.)