Tornadoes are serious.

Oil rig explosions and spills are serious.

Volcanoes are serious.

People die. Can’t get much more serious than that.

But we live in an age of breathless media speculation.

Each TV channel and, to some extent, each edition of each newspaper seems obsessed with interviewing people who go on and on about how bad things could become.

Almost forgotten today is the eruption in Iceland just a few weeks ago that grounded air travel in Europe and to and from Europe by Americans and others.

No one could have gotten on the air by saying, “Yep. It’s a bad thing. There’s no way to tell when the ash will stop billowing into the atmosphere. There’s no way to tell how long it will take to dissipate once the eruption stops. We just have to wait and see.”

Instead, person after person was found to talk about the calamity in terms of global doom.

The situation following the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico has followed the same script.

The possibilities of lasting environmental harm have been real and should not be diminished.

Even way up here in Vicksburg, looming effects range from the price of fuel and the price and availability of seafood to jobs. Hundreds here build exploratory oil rigs, work offshore or are engaged in river commerce. With sea lanes closed, would there be layoffs in the barge industry because no ships could arrive in New Orleans with cargo to move upstream and nothing could be moved downriver because it couldn’t be shipped out through the gulf?

Commentators engaged in even more intense rhetoric. The spill proved offshore oil couldn’t be obtained safely (with no mention that 3,857 oil and gas platforms are still working in gulf, not having exploded.) The spill proved President Barack Obama has lost his mind even to have suggested more offshore exploration.

Statements were made such as “the shrimp industry will never be the same” and “beach tourism from Texas to Florida is devastated.”

Also, the spill was “an act of God” to teach us to respect the environment, “an act of extremists” to derail the idea of more drilling or “BP could have acted more quickly to stop the flow but didn’t because it is a foreign company trying to destroy America.”

Here and everywhere, we’re a nation on tenterhooks for real reasons, such as terror attacks and attempted terror attacks. We don’t need media that delight, for competitive purposes, in ratcheting up or exploiting fears any more than we need a media that ignore or underreports serious threats.

All this reminds me of the Pulitzer Prize earned by our predecessors at this newspaper in 1954.

On Dec. 5, 1953, on a Saturday afternoon, downtown Vicksburg had been hit by a tornado similar to the one striking at Eagle Lake last month. Thirty-eight people were killed, many of them children. The newspaper’s offices, then at Cherry and South streets, were not damaged, but there was no electricity or natural gas. The staff went to work, prepared and printed and delivered a Sunday morning edition.

The citation for journalistic excellence wasn’t based on exceptional photographs of the storm or its aftermath, on flawless or incisive writing or some snappy words by a columnist. It was for getting the paper out and providing readers factual information to counter rumor and speculation. It was, as a staffer that night told me, “for telling people, ‘It’s this bad, but no worse.”

He went on to tell me, “You know, that’s the important thing in news reporting. You tell people the truth and they can deal with it, no matter what.”

That was a different time.

Today, the priority seems to be to scare people enough — to add to their worries — so they’ll stay tuned in.

•

Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail cmitchell@vicksburgpost.com.