The Culture of Fear_ Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things - Barry Glassner [3]
As the decade progressed, overblown fears about terrorism and, later, public unease about the Iraq war distracted us from domestic issues that were growing more urgent by the month. In addition to serious, long-standing dangers to Americans’ health and well-being, lax or nonexistent regulations on financial institutions set the stage for a major international economic collapse. Threats to the U.S. financial system, obscured from public view in part by endless attention to the “war on terror,” undermined America’s national security more than Osama bin Laden and his organization ever did. As I note in the first edition’s introduction, the serious problems people ignore often give rise to the very dangers they fear the most.7
When I give public talks about the culture of fear, I am frequently asked, “Well, what should I be afraid of?” My answer is not “nothing,” as some of my questioners assume. On the contrary, I point out dangerous trends that have been around for a while and are thus viewed as old news and unappealing to the media. Motor vehicle injuries, for example, are the leading cause of death in the U.S. for children ages one to fifteen. Drowning and fires are second and third. Youngsters’ head injuries from bicycle accidents account for nearly 140,000 visits to the emergency room each year. If a parent is concerned about his or her children, their money is best spent on car seats, smoke detectors, swimming lessons, and bike helmets as opposed to GPS locators and child identification kits. They would hardly know that, however, from watching their local TV news or listening to the hype from advocacy groups.8
Many of the fear-worthy items I mention in the book are everyday scares we can deal with sensibly as long as we have the facts. More dif ficult to grasp is an underlying problem that has worsened in the intervening years: the massive gap between rich and poor. The culture of fear contributes to this schism by portraying the poor as threatening and unsympathetic. Yet just as the financial crisis that began in 2008 jeopardized not only people who lost their jobs and homes but also Americans’ strategic foreign interests, the gap between rich and poor threatens not only poor people but all Americans. “Living in a society with wide disparities—in health, in wealth, in education—is worse for all the society’s members, even the well-off,” wrote Elizabeth Gudrais, a journalist and associate editor of Harvard Magazine, reporting on a 2008 study about life expectancy in the United States. “Research indicates that high inequality reverberates through societies on multiple levels, correlating with, if not causing, more crime, less happiness, poorer mental and physical health, less racial harmony, and less civic and political participation.” Gudrais noted that in 2006 the disparity between rich and poor in the United States was at its highest point since 1928, with the top 1 percent of earners drawing 20.3 percent of the total national income.9
Gudrais’s article illustrates a positive role that journalists play in the culture of fear. While a major focus of this book is fear mongering by journalists and others, throughout the chapters that follow I take note as well of reporters who bring to light serious dangers about which the public hears little from politicians, corporations, and most of the media. Indeed, again and again I find that it is reporters, rather than government oversight organizations, academics, or other professional truth seekers, who debunk silly or exaggerated scares that other journalists irresponsibly promulgate.
Unfortunately, however, these correctives often occur long after