Perhaps our over reaction is due to not having faced anything like this before. We never, or almost never, had any kind of terrorist attacks outside of three from the past that I can recall. The first being in Boston in 1959 at the North Station train terminal, and the others 40-plus years later in Oklahoma and then we faced the two at the Twin Towers in New York with the final one being the final blow. We then went more than a decade before we got hit by the crackpots in Boston who blew up some pressure cookers at the Boston Marathon. It appears they also had plans for attacks on the "T" as well and devices were found in the nearby subway station. Having said that, we're shocked, panicked and horrified that something like that would happen to us.
Indeed I agree the media makes a bigger hype out of everything, which only makes attacks more worthwhile. If no one reported, or downplayed the attacks here, then the attackers wouldn't get the notoriety boost they're looking for. I'm sorry to say it but big headlines do it, but a passing note on the evening news fit in between the cutesy stories about little kids and kittens, with more news at 11, takes the fluff out of their cause.
The same with the EBOLA. Yes, it's a bad thing and we should take precautions with it, but to blow up every single case into hysteria only makes matters worse, and the only ones benefiting from this is the news media with their bigger advertising dollars. The thing is I'm getting to a point where I don't even watch the news anymore. It's all the same blah, blah, blah, sensationalism on the same subjects. They make a big to-do over nothing most of the time, and will over report a story to a point where I swear the media outlets then look for eye witnesses to a point where they go as far as interviewing the ants on the sidewalk in some cases, making what was once headlines nothing more than repetitious blabber.
John