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BY JOHN SANFORD The news media stoke fears of unlikely dangers -- road rage, homicidal kidnappers and terrorism, for example -- while largely ignoring more immediate and widespread crises, such as malnourished children and increased traffic deaths, according to Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California.
From left, moderator Paul Saffo and panelists Jay Harris, James Bettinger and Barry Glassner discussed "American Media and the Culture of Fear" July 23 in an event sponsored by the Aurora Forum. Photo: L.A. Cicero Glassner read from a June 21 Newsweek article, "Machine vs. Man: Checkmate," which concludes: "Could we ever face anything akin to the horrendous sci-fi nightmares that we see in Terminator 3? In the long run, it's well worth worrying about." "I can't make this stuff up," he quipped. Author of the best-selling book The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, Glassner spoke at the July 23 Aurora Forum, "American Media and the Culture of Fear," to about 500 people in Kresge Auditorium. The other panelists were Jim Bettinger, director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford, and Jay Harris, chief executive officer of the Foundation for National Progress and publisher of Mother Jones magazine. The moderator was Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park. In addition to discussing the symptoms of media fear mongering, panelists examined the roots of the phenomenon. Although Americans today live in "about the safest times in human history," people working in the media and politics "make lots of money and lots of good careers off of tapping into Americans' moral insecurities," Glassner said. News magazines and local TV news are among the worst offenders, he said. Local TV journalists, for example, cover an inordinate amount of crime. As a result, many Americans believe the U.S. crime rate is holding steady or rising when, in fact, it has fallen dramatically in recent years, Glassner said. Meanwhile, real crises -- in health care, education and the environment -- get very little attention from local news stations. In the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism is the newest threat being blown out of proportion by the media, Glassner said, acknowledging that "to even say what [he] just said ... is considered Martian or unpatriotic or both." Citing U.S. State Department statistics, he noted that the deadliest year for terrorism on record was 2001, when about 3,500 people worldwide died because of terrorist attacks. But more than 10 times that number died on U.S. highways in 2001 -- half of them as a result of drunk driving, he said. (According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 42,196 people died on highways that year; 17,400 of these deaths were alcohol related.) For a period of about 10 years, the media actually focused a lot of attention on drunk driving, and the number of resulting deaths decreased, Glassner said. But as soon as the media shifted its attention to incidents such as road rage, "which threatens almost no one and has existed since the Model T," the death rate from drunk driving started going up, he added. Bettinger, who said he agreed with just about everything Glassner wrote about the media in The Culture of Fear, explained that there are "some honorable and not-so-honorable" reasons journalism often fuels irrational fears. The news environment has grown ever more cacophonous and unrelenting with all-news radio, several national newspapers and several sharply competing 24-hour news channels, not to mention the Internet. Meanwhile, the number of people who read newspapers or watch network news every day has fallen dramatically. As a result, editors and producers must find ways to make their news coverage stand out, Bettinger said. Stories with a "scare angle" achieve that goal. Scare stories also are relatively easy to do; all you need is a "schlock academic or authority" who will attest, say, that people can get addicted to the Internet, Bettinger said. "It is much easier than devoting the resources to a much more nuanced, investigative piece," he explained. Harris said stories that overhype fears about mutant germs, for example, give no political offense. "You bash the heck out of them, and no editor's going to get in trouble; no advertisers are going to cancel their advertising," he said. "It's safe." He also asserted that reporters and news executives today face more political intimidation than they did in the past. The current White House administration is "very secretive" and "plays extreme hardball," he said. "If a reporter who's on a beat runs a story that's kind of counter to the conventional wisdom, they can be punished. They can be locked out of stories, not called on in press conferences." Bettinger said he did not fully agree with Harris' take on political intimidation. Rather, he said, that as a result of financial pressures and declining newspaper readerships, news organizations often are reluctant to print stories that could alienate their readers. Co-sponsored by Continuing Studies and the Stanford Professional Publishing Course, the forum attracted a lot of people from the publishing world, and Saffo asked his final question with them in mind: "What are one or two pieces of practical advice, as specific as possible, you can offer these people in terms of countering this culture of fear?" Harris suggested they strive to diversify their "media diet" by reading five independent and alternative news sources a day. "I think it's going to broaden your view and that of the publications you work for," he said. Bettinger advised publishers and editors to seek writers who have authority in the subjects they will cover. "The smarter [writers] are and the more authoritative they are, the stronger your publication will be, and the less it will rely on questionable fear mongering," he said. Glassner suggested that editors and writers educate themselves about the actual probabilities of a particular danger before "you say something's a big danger. "And if it isn't, scrap the story or tone it down," he said.
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Stanford Report, August 6, 2003
