Terri Behling’s tired, and it’s because her phone has been ringing and ringing and ringing.
It has been like this for weeks now, and when she picks it up there’s always a reporter or TV producer on the other end, chumming for details about shark attacks.
“It’s just ridiculous,” says Behling, spokeswoman for the Mote Marine Laboratory’s Shark Research Center in Sarasota, who says she’s never seen anything like it.
“The calls are coming from all over the world. It’s every radio station and every little newspaper up and down the East Coast, asking, ‘What are the chances of people getting bit?’
“It’s unfortunate that when you turn on the TV it looks like sharks are biting people right and left, and that’s not the case. It’s just crazy.”
Crazy because the media have turned this summer into “Jaws, 2001″ by stoking people’s primeval fear about a critter with sharp teeth that doesn’t know any better but to hunt and eat, sort of like the Big Bad Wolf.
Never mind that you’re 30 times more likely to get hit by lightning than bit, that more people die each year trampled by elephants than falling victim to those jaws, or that overfishing and vigilantes are decimating shark populations globally.
In newsroom parlance, sharks make good copy — and even better video — and so the hook has been set. That said, a few stories have been newsworthy and others have contained interesting science. But far too many have been making much hysterical ado about nothing.
It started when 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast was nearly killed by a bull shark on a Pensacola beach. It was a startling, tragic incident that deserved to be reported, but it triggered a frenzy.
When a guy in the Bahamas got bit, he got air time. When a swarm of sharks gathered off Anclote Key north of Tampa, they got Super Bowl coverage. And when six surfers got nipped up at Ponce Inlet, some after knowingly swimming through sharks, well . . .
We’ve had our share of front-page stories, including ones on Arbogast, two on the Ponce Inlet bites and a piece by reporter Tony Manolatos under the headline, “Fear of sharks is mostly hype, experts say.”
Manolatos got the assignment from Metro Editor Matt Reed, who was told by a fisherman that sharks have more to fear from us. After talking to experts and cruising off the coast with some shark fishermen, that turned into the theme of his article.
“I just wanted to tell the story that made the most sense because the coverage had just gotten out of hand,” says Manolatos.
At Time magazine, editors devoted a cover story to sharks, replete with large cover and inside photos of those gaping jaws. The story focused on scientific research, including a detailed, two-page graphic. There also was a separate piece on Arbogast.
“You always wonder about striking the right balance to get people’s attention and not overdo it, and I think we got it right,” says Time’s deputy managing editor Steve Koepp, who called during a beachfront vacation with his family in Montauk, N.Y., Still, says Koepp, whose 7-year-old son had been playing in the water, the “thrill factor” with sharks is undeniable for the press and public because it’s “very visual and dramatic.”
“Are we making people more alarmed than they need to be?” he says.
“People know attacks are rare. But part of the allure and fascination with sharks is the danger. And just like roller coasters in the summer, people know they’re going to be all right, but there’s something spooky about them.”
To Skip Valet, news director at WKMG-TV Channel 6 in Orlando, the answer to questions about shark hysteria is a quick no.
“I really don’t think so simply because of the unusual number of shark sightings this year,” Valet says. “When we go out with our cameras, we’re finding large groups of sharks just hanging out in shallow water.
“I think viewers and readers deserve all the information they can get about going into the water right now,” he says, particularly safety tips.
Back in Sarasota, Behling is all for the tips and stories on shark science, but she’s dismayed about much of what she has seen and read.
“I think that it can put some fear in people that normally wouldn’t have that fear,” she says. “What are you going to do?”
