Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

The Man in the Moon and the Face on Mars
managing editor of Weekly World News, discussing the stories he
publishes, says 'For all I know, they could be the product of active
imaginations. But because we're a tabloid, we don't have to
question ourselves out of a story.' Scepticism doesn't sell newspapers.
Writers who have defected from the tabloids describe
'creative' sessions in which writers and editors dream up stories
and headlines out of whole cloth, the more outrageous the better.
Out of their immense readership, are there not many who take
the stories at face value, who believe the tabloids 'couldn't' print it
if it wasn't so? Some readers I talk to insist they read them only for
entertainment, just as they watch 'wrestling' on television, that
they're not in the least taken in, that the tabloids are understood
by publisher and reader alike to be whimsies that explore the
absurd. They merely exist outside any universe burdened by rules
of evidence. But my mail suggests that large numbers of Americans
take the tabloids very seriously indeed.
In the 1990s the tabloid universe is expanding, voraciously
gobbling up other media. Newspapers, magazines or television
programmes that labour under prissy restraints imposed by what is
actually known are outsold by media outlets with less scrupulous
standards. We can see this in the new generation of acknowledged
tabloid television, and increasingly in what passes for news and
information programmes.
Such reports persist and proliferate because they sell. And they
sell, I think, because there are so many of us who want so badly to
be jolted out of our humdrum lives, to rekindle that sense of
wonder we remember from childhood, and also, for a few of the
stories, to be able, really and truly, to believe in Someone older,
smarter and wiser who is looking out for us. Faith is clearly not
enough for many people. They crave hard evidence, scientific
proof. They long for the scientific seal of approval, but are
unwilling to put up with the rigorous standards of evidence that
impart credibility to that seal. What a relief it would be: doubt
reliably abolished! Then, the irksome burden of looking after
ourselves would be lifted. We're worried - and for good reason -
about what it means for the human future if we have only
ourselves to rely upon.
These are the modern miracles, shamelessly vouched for by
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