Issues Management: The Exception is Not the Rule
It's one of the most common ways emotional narratives are used to change your perspective.
If you’ve been on one side of a contentious issue recently, even if it was a friendly debate with your brother-in-law at the family reunion this summer, there’s a good chance that you or he trotted out an example of an exception as the rule.
Case in point. This time of year, there are shark sightings off the coast of America’s beaches. That’s because more people are in or near the water, not because there is a change in shark behaviors. This can set off a certain amount of panic among beach-goers who may remember the occasional shark attack they saw in the news at some point in recent years. But the truth is, there are only a handful of global shark bite incidents yearly. In 2024 the total number of unprovoked shark bites around the globe was 47.
Still, based on fear and no small amount of legal risk awareness, lifeguards will be instructed top shut down beaches at the mere hint of sharks anywhere near swimmers, and to be honest, I myself would be the last one to go near the ocean if I heard of any sharks in the vicinity. But still, my emotions aren’t enough to establish a new rule that sharks are any higher of a threat to humans than they’ve ever been.
Closer to home, there are any number of hot-button issues that also deploy the strategy of using the exception to make the rule, from sports participation and locker room policies, to environmental regulation and onto free speech issues.
On matters of speech, it’s gotten so that if one person is offended by a group’s words or vernacular, companies, school boards and others leap into action to tamp down the offensive speech. That’s a very common case of minority rule, where a single individual can establish new policies if that individual is offended by or concerned about something.
Of course, it can go the other way, too. In Aberdeen, Scotland, one student suffering from a condition known as species dysphoria believed he was an animal, not a human. While the schools did not make specific accommodations for the student, that student was permitted to continue attending school under the belief that he was not human. The system in effect accepted this as a norm. This passive sanctioning of a mental disorder is an example of how one student’s issue made the rule for the school.
Any time you let the exception determine the law, policy, regulation and redefine societal norms, you in effect have no norms. You have exceptions holding those norms hostage.
What Does "The Exception Is Not the Rule" Mean?
When we say, “The exception is not the rule,” we are trying to distinguish between anecdote and data, between rarity and commonality, between the greater good and the wants of the individual.
On matters of speech, just because someone may be offended that does not warrant preemptive self-censorship. Even if a minority of voices complain about a person’s exercise of their right to free speech, should those complaints be used to justify sweeping new speech-regulating policies?
If someone uses the right buzzwords (i.e. “safety,” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate,” etc. ), do they still have the right to silence others and force them to surrender their own rights to free speech?
During the Covid-19 pandemic, this was the first time in my decades-long career in media communications where subject matter experts were routinely punished and ostracized by society as a whole for offering alternative points of view. This was the case even as authorities acknowledged we were learning as we went. But they and others in positions of power refused to allow any disagreement with decisions they made.
As a result, some medical doctors and scientists were removed from jobs, positions of influence, membership in medical associations. Their articles were banned and removed from websites. They were banned from social media. These are the ones who were medically trained to offer informed points of view. A slew of journalists, social media users and others also were banned from public discourse if they deviated from approved narratives.
When the Covid vaccines were introduced, we were told they were “safe and effective,” and that if you were vaccinated you could not get or spread Covid. When that turned out not to be true, instead of reexamining the vaccine itself against the common definition of a vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changed the very definition of “vaccine” on its website such that it allowed the Covid vaccine to still meet the criteria for a vaccine. The exception made the rule.
A Call for Discourse
This is not a call to ignore exceptions. Exceptions can be meaningful. They can point to gaps in our systems, inspire innovation, or highlight unseen struggles. But they should prompt investigation, not instant generalization. The exceptions certainly should not be used in themselves to establish new precedent for all.
We must allow for questioning and discourse. The news media should provide not just stories and reports and a single narrative, but also context.
In these times, emotional appeal often trumps reality and real data. The rare is too often portrayed as the norm. In this climate, understanding that the exception is not the rule is not just logic at work, but it is also an obligation we have to the truth itself. We must respect the actual rules at play while learning from the exception, not the other way around.