It was 1999, and the now iconic Columbine shooting had just happened. I was a reporter for the tabloid The National Examiner. My job was first to prod the victims’ parents and families to say who they thought was to blame and then ask them if they felt partially responsible. Then I was to convince the rest of America this could happen in their schools and communities.

As one of the victims’ parents broke down crying over the phone, my conscience got the better of me. I told her to hang up the phone and unplug it from the wall. Within a month I quit my job, hoping to work where that kind of fear-based reporting wasn’t the standard. But when I looked around at the rest of the media, they were all guilty of sensationalizing the truth to scare people, or more accurately to scare the sponsorship dollars out of them by getting them to read and watch.

The daily coverage of Columbine lasted for days, then weeks, even though there was no new information. The world of journalism descended to an all time low, consumed by what I call tragicide: the willful and malicious promotion of tragedy by the spreading of fear instead of information.

The Media’s Three-Part Attack Plan

It’s quite purposeful and irresponsible. The media have three phases to their attack plan when covering the news. The first is the actual reporting of the story. But in today’s saturated news world with thousands of reporters descending on a story, the information is fished out within minutes or at most a few hours.

In order to keep the story going, reporters depend on the second phase — the blame game — finding a scapegoat and pinning them to the wall, right or wrong, justified or not.

But the third and most insidious phase — and the one they milk the most because they can so easily — is the fear and intimidation phase. “This,” whatever this is, “could happen to you, to your family, in your town, in your country, in our world!” And then we will all die, or starve, or go broke, hungry, homeless, we will lose our house, our health.

Let’s look at some of the media’s most popular misinformation-based Tragicide.

Consider terrorism. You want to tell me our nation needs sound policies to protect ourselves globally and domestically? I’m all ears. But don’t tell me our nation is in danger of being overrun by terrorists when the facts are we have had a fraction of the fatalities and events related to terror than in other nations around the world. That’s Tragicide.

Here’s a big one: the economy. It’s improving. Look at the numbers. Our nation is leading the world right now in its economic recovery. Our stock market is up in the stratosphere because of the boom of new public companies and low interest rates. And that has nothing to do with being a Republican or a Democrat or whether you approve of or think President Obama’s leadership stinks. It’s because devoted Americans have worked hard, against all the pressures of government and crony capitalists working against them.

That’s the real story of the economy that needs telling. Tell me those stories, because there are a lot of them. And most importantly, let me know how we can get the people who aren’t working included in the prosperity. That’s meaningful and real reporting.

The current coverage of the anti-Trump protests is a perfect example of Tragicide. It’s that kind of illegitimate and fraudulent reporting that could incite an actual explosion or two. Tell me the real story, which is that this nation has come back from an incredibly divisive election to come together in peaceful presidential transition with the huge majority of Americans pledging to give the new president a chance whether they voted for him or not. That is the miracle of America.

What about gun violence and those horrible school shootings? Real reporting reveals those are rare events. They don’t point to an uptick in gun-related homicides. In fact the homicide rate has dropped dramatically since the nineties.

If It Bleeds, It Leads

This type of, “If it bleeds, it leads” reporting is not a new thing. But it’s gotten worse, as former CBS News Anchor Dan Rather admitted to the Washington Post back in 1997. “We’ve changed, and not for the better, in running stories we know in our journalistic heart of hearts don’t meet the standard to be on the network news,” admitted Rather. “We run it because we’re scared to death our competition is going to run it and beat us. Every network feels it.”

That fraudulent reporting isn’t just unprofessional. It hurts people. It takes a toll on the spirit and morale of society. Researcher George Gerber discovered the statistical evidence of what he called “mean world syndrome.” Television viewers believe that the world is a whole lot more violent and dangerous than it actually is. They begin to live in fear and distrust, based not on reality but on what they see and read.

And Tragicide claims real victims. Just under a month after Columbine, a copycat opened fire at Heritage High School just outside of Atlanta.  According to Sherry Towers, an Arizona State University research professor who studied the effects of media coverage of shootings, that shooting was directly tied to the media coverage of Columbine.

Mass shootings can actually be “contagious” if given major national news coverage and lead to copycats and more violence within an average of 13 days. “What we found was, in ones that didn’t get a lot of media attention there was no contagion,” said Towers. “And in the ones where we did see a lot of media attention, that’s where we saw the contagion.”

Fighting Tragicide

What can we do when the major media exploit fear and sensationalize the news and make a better profit by doing so? We can’t completely turn off the television news and stop reading the news sites. But we can watch it and read it less and with less blind allegiance and more skepticism. We can look for the facts in as many places as possible.

I have traveled all over this nation and heard from so many people how they have stopped watching and reading the news as often as they used to. And you know what? Nothing bad happens when people do it. In fact, a whole lot of good things happen because they aren’t caught up in the fear. They are working to solve problems in their day to day lives, they are starting and running companies, they are helping their neighbors and their communities.

That’s one way we can fight this. Live our lives happily and successfully. That’s the number one way you fight the media’s exploitation of Tragicide. Stop buying into the fear.

But there are a couple of other things you can do. If you really want to make a difference, call your local and national media and tell them you are tired of this type of coverage. After the sensational coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 viewers flooded the networks’ switchboards. And the sensational coverage stopped. Maybe those calls even convinced a few media people that what they were doing was wrong. We can always hope.

You can also call, write or email the sponsors for those networks, and tell them you will not buy their products if they support such coverage. And then stick to your guns on that threat. Because at the end of the day money talks.

Chris Benguhe, a former reporter for People magazine and other national outlets, is a contributing editor of Scenes, where a longer version of “Tragicide” appeared. An online magazine devoted to entertainment and culture, Scenes is also a digital platform of original short films and music.