en-ru -- больше или меньше

[grey-hound-me.livejournal.com]

Имеется следующий пассаж. Вроде бы все несложно, и мысль выражена четко. Но хоть убейте не могу понять, почему говорится о more severe or higher, а не less severe or lower ((

To test whether news coverage influences policy, NNN and SSS use the fact that disaster news may be crowded out of the news casts by other newsworthy material. For example, it seems unlikely that disasters that happen to occur at the same time as the Olympic Games are systematically more severe or higher on political agendas than other disasters, after accounting for seasonal effects. However, news coverage of a disaster may be crowded out by news coverage of the Olympics. If so, then disasters that occur during the Olympics, while otherwise similar to disasters occurring at other times, will nonetheless receive less coverage. If news affects policy, then the disasters that occur during the Olympics will receive less relief.

Уважаемые сообщники, поделитесь, плиз, своими соображениями.