The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things

Rating:
Summary: A poor imitation of Frank Furedi's book of the same name
Review: While I liked the theme of the book I was constantly reminded of a similar but far better book on the same subject written by Frank Furedi in 1997. Not only does Glassner examine many of the same panics as Furedi, he even seems to have borrowed his title! (Furedi's book is entitled 'Culture of Fear: risk taking and the morality of low expectations'). Disappointingly, unlike Furedi's compelling analysis, Glassner's explanation of why we are all so fearful is also less than convincing. Very poor show.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent criticism of mass media's values and practices
Review: Glassner presents compelling, well-documented evidence to show how today's journalists help distract our attention from truly scary social problems and arouse our inquisitorial passions against the wrong scapegoats. His study demonstrates that market forces can be as effective as government censorship in regulating the distribution of news and restricting the terms of public debate. From his research it becomes quite clear that the U.S. media are playing an active role in creating a more uninformed, unequal and undemocratic society. This book deserves a wide audience among journalists, elected officials, policy analysts, educators and anyone who wants to become more aware of the unstated values and common editorial practices which shape our view of the world.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent expose of media fear mongers
Review: Barry Glassner offers welcome relief from the self-designated experts on adolescent violence and lethal killing. Glassner, a voice of reason, shows us that we should fear the television networks selling us a sordid bill of goods in the name of advertising dollars.

Rating:
Summary: I was afraid of everything--thank god for this book!
Review: Bacteria, con-men, teenage gangsters, eggs--everything and everyone around me seemed so threatening. Even though I've seen the figures on the declining rate of crime and know the odds of picking up a deadly virus from the Hilton are one in a billion, I had bought into America's culture of fear. Fear of the known, the unknown, the neighbor down the street and the local butcher. Now, thanks to Barry Glassner's book, I'm no longer afraid to leave my house, stay in a hotel room, buy chicken, send my kid to public school. This should be required reading for every parent and teacher.

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly convincing and fun to read.
Review: Okay, I bought this book yesterday and I'm already half-way through it. What does that tell you? The subject matter is anything but LITE. The parts I've gotten to so far are about kids who shoot up schools, murdering mothers, conservative nut cases, etc. etc. etc. Thing is, he's a GOOD writer. He totally keeps your attention. He even changed my opinion about some things, which any one of my friends will tell you is definitely not easy to do!

Rating:
Summary: Be Careful, Junk Science
Review: The author obviously has an agenda to protect Hollywood. Ill bet he lives in an upscale neighboorhood where all the police have to worry about are cats in trees. He tries to convince the reader that violence in the USA is because of the News. He steers you away from vulgar RAP music, the Gangsta culture, senseless violent movies, schools that are purposely dumbing down kids and the glorification by the media of alternate lifestyles, which are designed to weaken the family structure thus producing more crime. I recommend Four Reasons for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander, it is much more objective.

Rating:
Summary: Sleep easy...
Review: One knows to always take something with a grain of salt, but I never knew how big a grain it should be until marvelling at the level of detail and research the author put into this book. Although the overriding conclusions at the end of the book were themselves a bit of a reach and I didn't necessarily agree with them, the facts speak for themselves.

Reading this has made me immune to fear the mongering we experience everyday from the media, commercials and politicians. Now that my eyes (and ears) are open to these fear inducing "tricks", it is absolutely astounding how pervasive their use is--so much so I regularly laugh at the evening news and perscription drug commercials!

Buy the book and rest easy.

Rating:
Summary: Many Of The Wrong Fears - Why? - What Is The Answer?
Review: This book was written before 9/11 and before the stock market meltdown caused in part by the Dot.Com bubble bursting. These were things that we should have been fearing, but for the most part were not.

The book gives example after example of our misplaced fears. It is a good book but not great because it does not go deep enough to provide many answers. It is a very interesting read and you will be amazed at how the majority of Americans worry about the wrong things. "The Culture Of Fear" gives some of the answers as to why this is occurring.

Why do Americans fear crime more when the crime rate is falling substantially? Why do Americans fear crime by stranger the most when over 80% of all crime is done by persons well known to the victim? Why do Americans fear exotic diseases far more than a disease such as heart disease which is far more deadly. Why do Americans fear air travel so much when commercial air travel is still the safest form of travel?

The author provides you with strong data and careful reasoning to allow you the reader to remain calm and to better understand the risks in the world around you.


Rating:
Summary: good but not great
Review: Along with Emile Durkheim's examination of suicide, and countless other assessments, Barry Glassner, with his book titled, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, adds himself to a list of sociologists addressing social problems. A professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, Glassner is specifically interested in debunking social problems that have been exaggerated and over-played in America causing unnecessary fear. On most accounts, he successfully refutes many of America's fears about crime, deviance, and social dysfunction, and his book reads smoothly and easily. For the numerous Americans who remain blinded by politicians and the media, it is certainly an eye-opening and worthy read. However, Glassner's book does not come without fault. I could not rid myself of a growing disapproval as I continued towards the end of the book. It seems that, instead of providing a thorough analysis of America's culture of fear, as his book title hints, he remains caught up in listing numerous specific case complaints towards the media and others who are to blame for misleading the populous. Therefore, while filing numerous complaints towards the media etc., he fails to enter into any real depth of social analysis. At times, Glassner also reports some seemingly tainted inconsistencies in his writing. In end, I concluded that while Glassner's book serves as a good tool in popularizing somewhat necessary skepticism towards the media, it does little to make a profound contribution to sociology.
Glassner's book begins with a question that underlies the entirety of its pages. Specifically, he asks, "Why are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded?(XI)" Glassner seeks to answer why our fears are disproportionate to our everyday life, and at least, why are they so misplaced. Consequently, Glassner bombards the reader with numerous cases where fear has been used and abused. He then begins debunking such cases by quoting several media sources and the like, which have overblown certain events. For example, in Glassner's first case in point, the "road rage" scare, he uses a source from an ABC 20/20 announcer who is quoted saying, "They're all around you(people with road rage), everywhere you drive, waiting to explode.(3)" Similarly to this 20/20 newscaster, Glassner repeatedly points to the ability of the media to twist stories and make incidents seem far more imminent than they really are. He says, "People's stories seldom make the simple or singular point that journalists profess they do.(143)" Then, after illustrating this ability of the media, he attempts to find the method or meaning behind their madness.
In essence, Glassner says that continually the same reasons are found behind these scares. First, Glassner points to the "if it bleeds, it leads" motto of those relaying the news. This is cause for countless cases where emotion is seen to trump accuracy. Glassner also notes the selfish reasoning behind this thinking. For example, he says that media organizations tend to exaggerate stories, or select specific news because they seek readers, or more specifically money. Also, he says that politicians twist their news in search for votes or other selfish reasons.
Secondly, Glassner says that these media scares are cover-ups for much larger underlying social problems. Glassner hypothesizes that, "Our fear grows with our unacknowledged guilt(72)." In essence, fears are promoted as we continually hide in shame towards the social ails which truly plague society. He says that, "In just about every contemporary American scare, rather than confront disturbing shortcomings in society the public discussion centers on disturbed individuals.(6)" This offers explanation for the scares that run untamed. For example, as Glassner discusses the crack baby scare, he says, "A by-product of social and economic distress, crack became the explanation for that distress (136)." Or in the case of road rage, Glassner notes, there are 17,000 deaths caused by DUI crashes versus the 200 deaths per year caused by road rage. Glassner says we are spending a great deal of time and money focusing on something as minuscule as road rage, when DUI's and easy access to guns are constantly being overlooked. Similarly, we worry about "Gulf War Syndrome" instead of worrying about shortcomings of the military, or we worry about violence at work when we should worry about the millions of jobs lost each year, and so on. Adding credibility to Glassner's arguments, he backs up his theories and debunking with a plethora of outside sources that provide statistics and valuable quotes.
Therefore, Glassner successfully argues against numerous scares time and time again. He has an organized plan that he effectively uses, and he also proves to have given many hours of research into his project with statistics and quotes galore. However, as said earlier, his book does not come without fault. As his book developed I kept waiting for Glassner to switch over from his continuous scare cases and complaints into chapters devoted to discussing the actual culture of fear. Much to my dismay, it never happened. Nearly up until the books completion he speaks about the scare of plane wrecks, and even after he finally completes that episode, he still only devotes the last five pages to what he calls "Final Thoughts." I couldn't help but feel like I had just watched a Jerry Springer episode where after a half-hour of arguing and fighting, Mr. Springer devotes the last thirty seconds to stepping back and delivering his "final thoughts." Consequently, the downfall of this book as a contribution to sociology lies in its inability to spend considerable time evaluating the culture of fear as a whole. Glassner spends little time in deep social analysis, and even less time in hypothesizing how America can rectify the situation (and no mention is made to why people haven't tried to do so previously). While the back cover of the book places it in the current affairs/ sociology section, it is apparent that it leans much closer to the current affairs classification than it does to sociology.
Furthermore, Glassner sometimes seems to fall under ideological spells and tainted views similar to the very ones he criticizes. The foremost example comes as Glassner repeatedly points to America's lax gun policies as the underlying reason for violence in America. He points to the fact that many killings could be avoided if people didn't have such easy access to guns. However, with this explanation and no proof backing it, I found it hard to swallow his thinking as factual. Perhaps, with this current of thought, Glassner should have also promoted getting cars of the road or at least addressed the question- Is access to cars correlated to automobile crashes in the same way that gun access is correlated to violence? In another occasion, tainted gun views once more caused for inconsistency in his thoughts. That is, Glassner criticizes politicians for capitalizing on famous child-abduction cases to get feel-good laws passed to boost their popularity, but he championed Scotland for passing a reactionary law banning .22 caliber weapons in response to a rare occasion that a man used one to shoot someone at school.


Rating:
Summary: Great at defining the problem, but not as to why it exists
Review: Barry Glassner does a solid job of showing that Americans are afraid of the wrong things; each chapter in "The Culture of Fear" describes a perceived social malady (crack babies, plane crashes, road rage, etc...) and explains why it's not as bad as many Americans perceive it to be.

While "The Culture of Fear" does an excellent job of defining the problem, like many books of this genre, only a small portion of the text is dedicated towards explaining why this problem exists, and barely a nod is given towards how society can rectify the situation (and no mention is made of why people haven't tried to do so already).

Furthermore, Glassner never delves into why the media is so hellbent on trying to scare us - sure, what scares us is symptomatic of a greater social concern, that is more difficult to address. But what's in it for the fear mongers? While he does give lip service to "if it bleeds, it leads" he never gets into how much money media outlets make by scaring the bejesus out of us or that fear is good for their
advertisers as well.

The book is great for the information you can throw at your news-junkie friends, however. And, while you are probably already aware of some of the ways in which the media tries to frighten the public, you'll pick up on some other scare tactics and become more media savy.