Rating: 
Summary: More questions than answers ...
Review: First, it is important to note that Glassner is a sociologist, rather than a scientist or statistician. He relies on the tools of his trade when he examines popular, but unfounded, fears that exist in American culture. He sees these fears as misplaced or metaphorical, which allow us to express our fears while hiding their real causes.This approach, therefore, relies on intuition and subjective reasoning as much as hard analysis and objective reasoning. However, Glassner does include literally hundreds of endnotes, assuring the reader that he has indeed done his homework. I usually prefer not to respond to other reviews in my own, but Glassner could probably write a new chapter based on the reactions to his book. The reviews that argue Glassner has a hidden agenda to promote gun control support his thesis that some issues--gun control and race relations, to mention two--are so taboo that we squelch debate or debate around them. So, we pass laws about road rage rather than examine our gun control laws that allow minor traffic accidents to turn into homicide. I don't believe that Glassner is advocating gun control, even though it does come up a few times in the first few chapters. Instead, Glassner is advocating a frank discussion of gun issues, a discussion we avoid when we talk about Marilyn Manson, gangsta rap, and violent video games after a school shooting. Fortunately, this book is about more than gun issues. Anyone who would argue otherwise probably hasn't made it past the first chapters. After reading this book--which I admit I read cover-to-cover while the early round NCAA games were on in the background Saturday--I am left with more questions than answers. Glassner, again nodding to his background as a sociologist, really left me with more things to think about than solid answers. Of course he advances his own theories, but I don't think he ever presents them as more than that. Rather, his approach is to lay out an overview of the issue at hand--such as why we are so afraid of flying--examine some of the evidence, and, briefly, offer his take.
Rating: 
Summary: big scares hide our failure to address deeper problems
Review: Glassner's criticisms of the tendencies of our media and our politicians to hype alleged dangers fall on both the right and the left. Perhaps most important, he shows how America's leaders, and the people who elected them, are using these big scares to avoid talking about the real things wrong with our society. We worry about road rage instead of addressing serious transportation issues; worry about child kidnapping instead of about the lack of adequate food, housing, and health care for many of the nation's children; worry about crack cocaine instead of the vast numbers of people abusing alcohol and the lack of treatment for almost any drug problems. One warning: if you love your gun, you won't like the book, because Glassner emphasizes that for many of our alleged violence problems, "IT'S THE GUNS, STUPID." A quote that sums up the book: "We waste tens of billions of dollars and person-hours evry year on largely mythical hazards like road rage... on programs designed to protect young people from dangers that few of them ever face, on compensation for victims of metaphorical illnesses... We can choose to redirect some of those funds to combat serious dangers that threaten large numbers of people. At election time we can choose candidates that proffer programs rather than scares. Or we can go on believing in martian invaders."
Rating:
Summary: Good critique of mainstream media
Review: In The Culture of Fear, Glassner largely takes the media to task for reporting on the sensational and shocking, but irrelevant, rather than the real mundane issues. Media reports of airplane crashes, random child abductions, and road rage incidents grab our attention and cause us distress, but Glassner argues the real risks we face are often boring, routine issues that don't grab our attention. In addition, we tend to direct our national concerns, and resources, towards perceived threats that rarely occur, while letting our guard down to what should really concern us. This can lead to the real problems of society to needlessly persist. The book is exhaustively researched, using numerous citations from mainstream media and tremendous number of academic studies. Glassner is clearly knowledgeable with the issues of drug use, crime, airplane safety and other issues he discusses. His opinions and analysis are based on his training as a sociologist and the University of Southern California, and I appreciate the academic treatment of issues often handled with those with a clear political, social, or economic agenda. Glassner certainly favors gun control, but he's more concerned with the media creating a healthy National debate on the issue, rather than pushing his personal agenda. Glassner more reports on the phenomena and gives few reasons for it, beyond the obvious. Everyone pretty much understands editors put shocking, yet rare incidents on the front page to sell newspapers. Near the end of the book, Glassner recalls a conversation with a reporter that newspaper editors are personally concerned with air safety, so articles on air safety tend to dominate the news. While this is anecdotal, more details on the decision making process within the media would be very welcome. Little is said why the public accepts the media distortions claimed to exist. This aside, a good analysis on the media distorts many of our perceptions and understandings.
Rating:
Summary: look askance at major media
Review: Glassner took 5 years off from teaching sociology at USC to write "Culture of Fear." It certainly shows. This book is a meticulously-footnoted indictment of mass media's distortion of reality. Among the things that Glassner skewers is the media's portrayal of teen moms & young black men as destroyers of American society, road rage, plane crashes, & health woes related to breast implants. The basic premises that Glassner covers are these: 1) Mass media creates panics & hysterias from a few isolated incidents. 2) Anecdotal evidence takes the place of hard scientific proof. 3) The experts that the media trots out to make comments really don't have the credentials to be considered an expert. 4) Entire categories of people are christened as "innately dangerous" (like the aforementioned teen moms and young black men) Sometimes Glassner's tone towards media is very snide, which may turn the reader off. Nonetheless, I came away with a new distrust of nightly news magazines, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and others. Glassner goes for breadth rather than depth; many of the topics that he covered could be books in their own right. If you lean towards the Christian Conservative side, you won't like this book. Same goes for 2nd Amendment proponents, some Republicans and Libertarians.
Rating:
Summary: Chicken Little USA
Review: It's amazing that many Americans even have the guts to get up in the morning. In a nation where, statistically speaking, people have the most risk-free and least danger-prone standard of living in the world, Americans are ridiculously prone to being scared of things that have no reason to be scary. Classic examples are rising fears of crime and drug use, which are actually falling, and the curiously American obsession with illnesses and domestic threats that don't even exist. Barry Glassner studies this phenomenon with a great no-holds-barred investigative style and plenty of stinging social criticism. As you can expect, Glassner's top culprits are corporations and the media. Guess what - there's money to be made from public panics and that's when the corporations move in. Pharmaceutical companies won't bother to tell you that the "epidemic" of depression in America has little or no scientific evidence to back it up, when they can make handsome profits selling the associated drugs. Meanwhile, in the media's obsession with advertising dollars, they are duped to play along with that trend uncritically. Also, ratings points are gained by bombarding the public with scare tactics about how everything is such a threat to their well-being. But we find that these tactics almost always involve isolated incidents that are portrayed as trends with dire consequences to all of society, plus "expert" testimony that is really personal anecdotes from propagandists and self-appointed moral watchdogs. Above Glassner's treatment of those phenomena, he has an even better big-picture theory. Media and public fascination with insignificant and nonexistent threats allow us to evade painful examination of real root causes and social problems. For example, the media jumped all over Gulf War Syndrome, which has never been proven scientifically, to criticize the military establishment, after being too scared to criticize the actual war. We are obsessed with minor teenage drug use and crime so we don't have to face the deeper social conditions that lead to those outcomes, especially poverty and inequality. In this book Glassner does a terrific job explaining why Americans will always obsess over the symptoms while pretending that the underlying diseases don't exist.
Rating:
Summary: Why I Don't Listen to the Media
Review: To anyone who is disgusted with local news, can't watch CNN, and would rather read the Economist instead of US News, Time, and Newsweek, this might be the perfect book. The name is sort of a misnomer though. It should be called "Media of Fear". Nonetheless, it reinforces what I've felt all along, that the media and news are not out to report what's informative and worthy, but what is sexy - and that is fear. Even though this was written before 9/11, this is even more poignant now. Glassner explains how the media ignores statistics and common sense in order to fill the airwaves and the printed word with scare tactics. He explains how the media, influenced by political groups and human interest stories, ignore the big picture and focus on anecdotal evidence in order to sell their fear. He provides many examples of this, from airplane crashes to vaccines, and explains how these unfounded fears come about. He carefully uses both concrete evidence and statistics to prove the media wrong, and explains why and how the media choose to report the way they do. Unfortunately, for people like me who already agree with him, it doesn't provide much new information. Also, when he talks of the media, he talks of the supply side. He rarely mentions the demand side. Why is such media is actually being watched, and why are consumers falling for this, hook, line, and sinker? Finally, the writing style is not altogether fluid. It's hard to describe, but it's not a real page turner. All in all, it's a good book. It'll either confirm what you already know, or be an eye opener.
Rating:
Summary: look askance at major media
Review: Glassner took 5 years off from teaching sociology at USC to write "Culture of Fear." It certainly shows. This book is a meticulously-footnoted indictment of mass media's distortion of reality. Among the things that Glassner skewers is the media's portrayal of teen moms & young black men as destroyers of American society, road rage, plane crashes, & health woes related to breast implants. The basic premises that Glassner covers are these: 1) Mass media creates panics & hysterias from a few isolated incidents. 2) Anecdotal evidence takes the place of hard scientific proof. 3) The experts that the media trots out to make comments really don't have the credentials to be considered an expert. 4) Entire categories of people are christened as "innately dangerous" (like the aforementioned teen moms and young black men) Sometimes Glassner's tone towards media is very snide, which may turn the reader off. Nonetheless, I came away with a new distrust of nightly news magazines, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and others. Glassner goes for breadth rather than depth; many of the topics that he covered could be books in their own right. If you lean towards the Christian Conservative side, you won't like this book. Same goes for 2nd Amendment proponents, some Republicans and Libertarians.
Rating:
Summary: well written but at times didactic
Review: The Culture of Fear is a book the demonstrates the ignorance of the American public and the willingness of major media outlets to pray on such ignorance in order to make easy points about issues that are really quite complex. To wit: in an anecdote about anti-abortionists, Glassner relates the story of certain of the lunatic fringe of anti-abortionists claiming that a woman who has an abortion has a greater chance of developing breast cancer. Media reports and politicians' please followed. The underlying problem with these claims was that they were reductive: the reduced a complex problem about epidemiology, probability, and statistical analysis to 'abortion = high chance of breast cancer'. That such an equation is emotive and not conducive to intelligent discussion of how cancers develop is not lost on Glassner but is lost on the American publics thirst for easy answers. What Glassner alludes to, but never squarely comes to terms with, is that Americans by and large are ill-educated, ignorant, deficient in comprehension of mathematics, and utterly devoid of any understanding of scientific inquiry and the scientific method. Instead, far too many Americans are seduced by the canivalesque emotion of the evening news; Dan Rather's stentorian authoriatarianism being sufficient proof that the end of the world is nigh. On these points, Glassner excels: Americans are deluged with emotionalism and sensationalism, all to the detriment of intelligent discourse on the issue at hand. But he does not finish this argument; namely, that America has inculcated in itself a culture in which such ignorance and naivete can flourish, and even be tolerated and expected. That is an interesting discussion Glassner does not touch. Despite these good qualities, there are times when Glassner becomes didactic in tone, especially when discussing the Catholic Church and the issue of gun control. On the one hand he claims the demonization of the Catholic Church is misplaced (he claims sexual predators among the clergy is not as widespread as it appears to be) and on the other, he hews to the simplistic argument about guns that the mere existence of guns promulgates murders with guns. Neither of these positions really holds up to scrutiny. While Glassner makes the interesting point that the Church ought to be criticized on the basis of its affiliations with certain political parties in Europe, that is really irrelevant to the discssion of the Church here in the United States, what with its rampant denials of widespread abuse by priests. He in effect is saying, the Church ought to be criticized, but not because of sexual abuse by priests. He fails to explain why the Church's affiliation with certain political parties in Europe (which he fails to mention by name) is a more worthy basis of criticism than is the wanton abuse of children by priests. On the issue of guns, Glassner asserts that, if there were fewer guns (i.e., more gun control) there would be fewer murders. No doubt this is true, however, he comes to this conclusion by effectively saying that the mere presence of guns contributes to mass slaughter. This is like saying the mere presence of alcohol in a bar makes you drunk. In both cases, of course, it takes the conscious action of a person for an undesired effect to occur.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: The author goes deep in exposing the hysteria created by the media and the powers that be to distract Americans from the real issues in our country. If you want a real explanation of why we don't see positive news reports, this is the book. If you don't agree that America is being keept afraid, buy this book and see what Glassner has to say about it. After the beheading of Berg, Television Española news network reported that terrorist leaders ordered their soldiers to attack every American or foreign civilian in Irak, something that was never mentioned on CNN, or any other "reputable" American news network, obviously with the intent not to alarm the American public and to prevent further distrust in Rumsfield and our President. Everyday I see startling (real, not manipulated "fear causing" news) news from European networks which tell the whole story and not just the bits and pieces that American networks broadcast, depending on the public opinion polls of the week. The media shouldn't be a puppet of the government, or a faucet that the powerfull ones with financial interest in governement contracts can shut to a trickle when it's convenient to their pockets. Wake up America! Learn French, Spanish, German, Japanese so you can get the whole picture. The American government for years has taken advantage of American's dislike for other cultures, and desinterest to learn new languages. The world is larger than the USA and everything outside this 3,500 miles affects this country. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very beneficial and Crucial!
Review: If there is any book out there on the effects of the mass media which holds water, it is this one. As an adamant critic of the mass media in the field of sociology, I have studied countless theories on how the media affects people's consciousness. These theories range from the over-discolosed "bullet" theory, reader-reception, Cultivation, and Social Cognitive. Glassnor tends to lean towards the cultivation theory, which states that people often get deceived with false images and percpetions of the outside world (ie- televsion violence- leads to "Mean World Syndrome," where people get the perception that the world is a much worse and evil place than it actually is). [For further reading on this theory, search for the name "George Gerbner".] It is very important as democratic US citizens to know how your fears can be (here's that word that makes people cringe) exploited in order to cash in on the so-called lingering "Armageddon".
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