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All three networks gave maximum publicity last Tuesday to the panicked calls to 911 by James Sikes at the wheel of his Toyota Prius on I-8 in San Diego. No one was harmed in the incident--apart from Toyota's already battered image for safety--yet NBC's Miguel Almaguer, CBS' Ben Tracy and ABC's David Muir all treated the apparent runaway as a drama of national importance.
So it was the ethical thing to do, in fairness to Toyota, to treat the possible debunking of Sikes' account of a jammed accelerator with equal prominence, even though the details of the story turned out to be trivial. No one--not Toyota, not federal investigators, no reporter--flat out accused Sikes of perpetrating a hoax. Here is what they did say: "raising serious doubts"--CBS' Dean Reynolds…"driver error means hitting the gas instead of the brake"--NBC's Tom Costello…"significant inconsistencies"--ABC's Muir.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the entire Toyota accelerator problem has been overcovered from the start. It is not as if American roads are a scene of unprecedented carnage. On the contrary, just last Thursday, CBS' Reynolds and ABC's David Wright both reported that highway fatalities are declining at a 9% annual rate with total deaths lower than at any time since the mid 1950s.
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