The Culture of Fear_ Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things - Barry Glassner [11]
Sheryl Stolberg, then a medical writer for the Los Angeles Times, put her finger on what makes the TV newsmagazines so cavalier: “Killer germs are perfect for prime time,” she wrote. “They are invisible, uncontrollable, and, in the case of Group A strep, can invade the body in an unnervingly simple manner, through a cut or scrape.” Whereas print journalists only described in words the actions of “billions of bacteria” spreading “like underground fires” throughout a person’s body, TV newsmagazines made use of special effects to depict graphically how these “merciless killers” do their damage.35
In Praise of Journalists
Any analysis of the culture of fear that ignored the news media would be patently incomplete, and of the several institutions most culpable for creating and sustaining scares the news media are arguably first among equals. They are also the most promising candidates for positive change. Yet by the same token critiques such as Stolberg’s presage a crucial shortcoming in arguments that blame the media. Reporters not only spread fears, they also debunk them and criticize one another for spooking the public. A wide array of groups, including businesses, advocacy organizations, religious sects, and political parties, promote and profit from scares. News organizations are distinguished from other fear-mongering groups because they sometimes bite the scare that feeds them.
A group that raises money for research into a particular disease is not likely to negate concerns about that disease. A company that sells alarm systems is not about to call attention to the fact that crime is down. News organizations, on the other hand, periodically allay the very fears they arouse to lure audiences. Some newspapers that ran stories about child murderers, rather than treat every incident as evidence of a shocking trend, affirmed the opposite. After the schoolyard shooting in Kentucky the New York Times ran a sidebar alongside its feature story with the headline “Despite Recent Carnage, School Violence Is Not on Rise.” Following the Jonesboro killings they ran a similar piece, this time on a recently released study showing the rarity of violent crimes in schools.36
Several major newspapers parted from the pack in other ways. USA Today and the Washington Post, for instance, made sure their readers knew that what should worry them is the availability of guns. USA Today ran news stories explaining that easy access to guns in homes accounted for increases in the number of juvenile arrests for homicide in rural areas during the 1990s. While other news outlets were respectfully quoting the mother of the thirteen-year-old Jonesboro shooter, who said she did not regret having encouraged her son to learn to fire a gun (“it’s like anything else, there’s some people that can drink a beer and not become an alcoholic”), USA Today ran an op-ed piece proposing legal parameters for gun ownership akin to those for the use of alcohol and motor vehicles. And the paper published its own editorial in support of laws that require gun owners to lock their guns or keep them in locked containers. Adopted at that time by only fifteen states, the laws had reduced the number of deaths among children in those states by 23 percent.37
The Washington Post, meanwhile, published an excellent investigative piece by reporter Sharon Walsh showing that guns increasingly were being marketed to teenagers and children. Quoting advertisements and statistics from gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association, Walsh revealed that by 1998 the primary market for guns—white males—had been saturated and an effort to market to women had failed. Having