Barry Glassner The Culture Of Fear

The Culture of Fear In "The Culture of Fear" by Barry Glassner, he describes how it is our perception that dangers have increased more than they actually are. Glassner states about the prices we have to pay for our panics, as well as the time and energy we spend worrying about the dangers. He also explains all throughout this book how organizations and people use the populations fears as a way to make more money. The Americans are afraid of everything because the media's broadcasting of crime, drugs, violence and diseases. Road Range is a good example that Glassner uses in his book, "The Culture of Fear", because the media hypes it up more than necessary. According to Oprah Winfrey's talk show they reveal to the population that can drive
that road rage could happen at any moment and to be looking over your shoulder all the time. As well as making road rage more hyped then it needs to be it also puts fear into peoples minds that usually all road ragers use guns to injure or kill their victims. Glassner challenges that by saying that out of approximately 250,000 people injured or killed on roadways in the years 1990-1997, the AAA, also known as the American Automobile Association, attributed to 218 deaths, better said as less than one in thousand that were directly to angry drivers. Glassner says "Big percentages so not necessarily have big numbers behind them." An example of that is "The dramatic "up more than 50%" statistic in the AAA study derived from the difference between two relatively modest figures: the number of traffic incidents that involved major violence in 1990 (1,129) compared to 1996 (1,800)." Only 671 incidents increased within all fifty state in seven years is not that big of a number (Glassner 5). Metaphoric Illness also contributes to our fears. One huge issue of the 1990's was GWS, Gulf War Syndrome. The media used sick veterans and their children to show us what effect GWS has on its victims (Glassner 156). "The New England Journal of Medicine did a study comparing 33,998 infants born to Gulf War veterans and 41,463 babies of other military personnel and finding no evidence of an increase in the risk of birth effects for children of Gulf War veterans" (Glassner 157). Glassner uses this in "The Culture of Fear" to show us how the media hyped up stories and put in lies to make people watch the news. By adding information that is false in the media coverage makes people freak out over something that is not that big of a deal. This problem has been blown out of proportion and since this was build up so much thousands of Gulf War veterans rather than go to get the counseling help they so desperately need they have undergone countless medical exams. The real illness is the fear, anxiety and hopelessness of the veterans; these may explain their "health" problems (Glassner 157). The ultimate fear for our teachers, churches, political parties and our parents is having our children or our youth at risk.
The media is at it again, hyping up stories about our youth, from school shootings, children gone missing, to teenage gambling, the media is trying to reinforce fears that there is an epidemic of youth violence. I believe that Glassner puts this in hi book to make us think about how much we watch on television is one hundred percent correct or if the media is putting false information to keep us scared. This makes you think, because you never really know what a child is going to do, but on the other hand you never really know what an adult will do either. Are we more interested in our youth then in the adults? Glassner puts a quote from Bob Dole that says" we must shift the focus on the juvenile justice system from rehabilitation to punishment" (Glassner 72). Glassner writes "Ignoring the fact that many juveniles serve longer sentences than adults for the same crimes, and that many juvenile facilities, grossly overcrowded and understaffed, provide rehabilitation services in name only" (Glassner 72). I believe that Glassner is trying to paint a picture to the readers that changing rehabilitation to punishment is not the answer, that maybe fixing the juvenile detention centers might work better. Glassner goes on saying that $30,000 or more per youth per year with over 100,000 youths behind bars on almost every day, the prison industrial complex is making money so they want to make sentences longer (Glassner 72). Getting back to the media, they thrive on youth violence. A very good example of this is the Columbine shooting, they showed the images over and over again to never let us forget what is in this world. Glassner states the 48% of all reports on children from CBS, ABC and NBC concerned with violence and crime and only 4% concerned or children's health, well being and economic issues (Glassner 72). Children should be worrying
about their grade on a test more so than if a fellow student will walk through the door shooting. People in America are afraid and scared of a lot of things because the media's broadcasts. They show people mostly false information with only a little bit of truth mixed in, like drugs, crimes, violence and diseases. Glassner try's to show us that most of everything the media says is false and that we need to think more into it and research before we get scared. Glassner also shows that most of our fears are due to mostly the media. We should worry a little bit about gun control or poverty, we need to not look over our shoulder every minute.