The News Spreads Fear of Violence

The news is an influential medium that plays a huge role in conditioning Americans. With 35 million nightly viewers, it is considered a trusted informant on the worlds events (Radford, 66). A problem with Americans using the news as their source of current events is that the reported stories are decontextualized and filtered through a journalist, which adds a bias to the stories. Not everything newsworthy makes it onto the news. What often does make it onto the news are crimes, sometimes bumping more important news off the air. A study done by Professor Joe Angotti from the University of Miami concluded that 30% of news air time is spent on crime, 15% is on the government and politics, 7% is on medicine and health care, and 2% is on education (Radford, 69). The disproportionate coverage of crime conditions people to fear crime more than they should. The more violence people watch on TV, the more conditioned they will be to perceive the world as violent. 

By emphasizing crimes and violence, the news spreads a false image of the world to viewers. For example, in 1994, a Time magazine article ran a headline across the top of two pages that read, “Not a month goes by without an outburst of violence in the workplace--now even in flower nurseries, pizza parlors and law offices” (Glassner, 26). Following this story, more than five hundred stories came out about violence in the workplace in 1994 and 1995 alone (Glassner, 27). Fear of random attacks by coworkers spread across the country. It was not until a journalist from The Wall Street Journal, Erik Larson, discovered the actual statistics that the myth of a workplace crisis was dispelled (Glassner, 27). He found that included in the scary statistics that newspapers were proliferating was the deaths of the most vulnerable workers: police, security guards, and taxi drivers, to name a few. Taxi drivers alone have a “homicidal rate twenty-one times the national average” (Glassner, 27). The news can spread false or exaggerated information to the public using misleading data. 

The Long-term Effects of Fear

The fear-evoking messages that the news emits are considered conditioning because their effects are long-lasting. Psychologist B. R. Johnson noted that while experiencing occasional fear for the sake of entertainment is harmless, fear becomes an issue when people “ruminate” about a disturbing event and “feel anxious or depressed for days” (Singer & Singer, 209). A mental health article by Denise Mann reported that frequent mental distress, including anxiety, stress and depression, is on the rise in America. Researcher Dr. Matthew M. Zack of the CDC reported that “in some areas, normal or low frequent-mental-distress levels increased over time, implying the introduction of influences that increased levels of frequent mental distress” (Mann). While Mann’s article does not offer what this influence is, it is likely that news coverage of fear-evoking events is a contributor to increased anxiety because of its repetitive and skewed representation of the world’s events.

Annotated Bibliography

Glassner, Barry. Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Very good source with helpful references and index. 276 pages.

This book goes beyond the obvious and digs deep into television's many effects on Americans’ fears. Glassner uses specific news stories to prove that stories are often exaggerated or told incorrectly. Case stories and extensive research are evidence that television has a role in creating magnified fears of child molesters, cyberpredators, teen gambling, and even black men.

Altheide, David L. Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002.

Excellent source with substantial references and useful index. 223 pages.

This insightful source highlights the nature of fear in our lives and argues that the media magnifies our “lens of fear,” or our fear-tainted view of the world. It narrows in on how particular organizations such as the military, television interviewers, and newspapers capitalize on spreading fear. Altheide explains that the use of fear as entertainment cause the growing perception that the world is hazardous, violent, and unsafe.

Singer, Dorothy G. and Jerome L. Singer. Handbook of Children and the Media. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2001.

Excellent source with extensive bibliography and index. 765 pages.

This text is very straightforward and easy to navigate. The authors support their information about televisions and their effects with statistics and psychological experiment results. Especially relevant are the chapters “Effects of Televised Violence on Aggression” and “The Media and Children’s Fears, Anxieties, and Perceptions of Danger.” The former gives useful background information about the influence of television on Americans. The latter delves into the psychological impact of television on children and uncovers the role media plays in children’s worries and anxieties. 

Howe, Michael J. Television and Children. London: New University Education, 1997.

Insightful source with useful bibliography and index. 157 pages.

As a psychologist, Howe has a lot to offer on the topic of television’s effect on children. His text draws a useful connection between television and learning. He describes children as John Locke would: savages with no knowledge of their society’s culture, or a blank slate. He asserts that television as a large component of children's’ learning about the world and culture and defines three ways that television effects viewers: effects on behavior, effects on knowledge, and effects on attitudes.

Radford, Benjamin. Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us. New York: Prometheus Books, 2003. 

Outstanding source with extensive bibliography and index. 324 pages.

This text provides a revealing look at the news and its motives. Chapter 3, “The News Bias,” is particularly useful because it provides background statistics that show that the news reports a disproportionate amount of crimes, leaving other important topics, such as education and health care, underrepresented. The effect of biased and disproportionate news is that people fear crime and tragedies more than they should.