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

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Summary: A great reading material for the media addict !
Review: Mr. Glassner has writtten a great expose about our delusional and paranoiac media system that perpetuates illusions, delusions, and partial truth, placing us in a constant imbroglio, and rendering our society into a bewildered, scared, narcissitic, paranoid, homophobic, split/schizophrenic, and brainwashed society.
Mr Glassner will provide you in his book with truthful material that will encourage the average person to cogitate, instead of simply absorb what the venomous media imbues in our minds.
Media 101 teaches that fear works and gets ratings. "instill fear in them and they shall follow."
The airwaves belong to the public and we should claim it back. We should contact our FCC and demand unbiased, honest, and decent programming.
Fear is the driving force and the major psychological component of terror. Fear incapacitates people and renders them impotent. Fear is conducive to regressive behaviors by responsible adults. Fears justifies our willingness to relinquish our most intimate and sacred rights in order to feel safe. Fear is primal. It brings out the primitive and reptilian part of our humanity.
It is tragic that the media outlets dictate our lives, educate our children, and shape our daily opinions.
We are treated as frightened, dependent, and ignorant children that will follow their parents anywhere to
survive. Walter Lippmann (a media Guru) has called us (the people) the perfect name "the bewildered herd." Or are we? The culture of fear makes a great reading that would help us dispel the myth behind our glamorous media !




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Summary: The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong T
Review: Excellent book. The researches various fears and their associated propaganda.



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Summary: Bad news Vs. Other Bad news
Review: This book provides us with clear and and easy to understand examples of how the media helped enflame or even create some of the fears in our society. I thuroughly enjoyed that aspect of it.

Unfortunately for me, the book also contains various suggestions as to what we really should be affraid of. It was baffling to me that after making such a great case for mistrusting the media's reporting, the author then goes on to use similar methods he criticized others for, to prove his own arguments.

There is a solid 100 pages of excellent, inquisititive writing. Regretfully, this book is over 200 pages long - that is why I had to give it two stars instead of four. (If you believe the numbers I gave you above - you Really need to read this book.)

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Summary: The Culture of Fear -- Book Summary
Review: USC sociologist Barry Glassner expresses his alarm at the precipitous heightening of fear that is currently permeating the American consciousness. According to Glassner the stakes are high:

"We had better learn to doubt our inflated fears before they destroy us. Valid fears have their place; they cause us to danger. False and overdrawn fears only cause hardship (xv)."

He argues that the opportunity costs in terms of misdirected time, research, and money can truly be staggering. So who benefits from pedaling these inflated fears and what can be done about it?

The two reasons most people give for this burgeoning culture of fear are premillennial tensions or the news media. The first concern holds so little merit as to be quickly dispatched, whereas the "media-effects theory" contains a partial clue to the puzzle. Glassner writes, "Producers of TV newsmagazines routinely let emotional accounts trump objective information" (xxii). However, he goes on later to write that the news media cannot be wholly blamed because unlike other benefactors of fear mongering the news media "sometimes bites the scare that feeds them." Glassner concludes, "The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes" (xxvii). He correctly includes the important role of power and influence as catalysts for perpetuating a culture of fear, as well as the usual suspect of corporate greed. Glassner goes on to mention some of these culprits:

"Politicians win elections by exaggerating concerns about crime and drug use when, in fact, both are in decline. Advocacy groups raise money by inflating the prevalence of specific and phantom diseases. Newspapers and television news programs monger new scares on a regular basis in order to gain ratings or increase sales (260)."

Glassner's research suggests that the media serves as the sometimes-unwitting vehicle for special interests that engage the media in a constant barrage of misinformation that lends support to their cause disregardless of the truth. But if this is true, then why aren't the effects felt evenly across the industrialized countries where the purveyors of fear are most keen to operate?

A more controversial explanation questions the official data and asks whether things may in fact be getting worse. It remains a possibility that what passes as truth is really a grand conspiracy to cover up that which most people already know intuitively, thus making those people amenable to new explanations that may, unfortunately, be either closer or further from the actual truth. However, even if this were true to some extent it is unreasonable to believe that such an explanation would explain all occurrences, unless of course we were living in the movie "The Matrix."

The most likely explanation for why the culture of fear is greater in American than other nations is because the media in the United States is privately owned, creating an increased reliance on advertising dollars and the need to sensationalize, all combining to allow for increased vulnerability to manipulation by special interests. Glassner suggests that the manipulation begins when "Fear mongers make their scares all the more credible by backing up would be experts' assertions with testimonials from people the audience will find sympathetic" (207). Basically, the message becomes engrained in our minds through the repetitive onslaught of misinformation pilfered into our minds by pseduo-authorities and anecdotal evidence. In the end the public is duped by emotional appeals that outweigh any iota of discerning logic.

For purposes of comparison, it would be useful to know whether or not other countries, whose media is privately owned, possess a similar culture of fear, as opposed to those countries where the media is publicly owned. Finally, if it turns out that there is a causal relationship between private media and an increased vulnerability to outside unscrupulous agents, then certainly Michael Powell and the FCC are moving in the wrong direction by consenting to greater media consolidation. Even Ted Turner of AOL Time-Warner distinction has argued against further media consolidation for fear that it would reduce the competitive pressure needed to ensure high quality programming and news information.

Rating:
Summary: nothing new
Review: This book basically just points out what most logical people already know. Glassner's arguements are obvious and dull. Culture of Fear isn't really worth reading.