Customer Reviews

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

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Glassner took 5 years off from teaching sociology at USC to write "Culture of Fear." It certainly shows. This book is a meticulously-footnoted indictment of mass media's distortion of reality. Among the things that Glassner skewers is the media's portrayal of teen moms & young black men as destroyers of American society, road rage, plane crashes, & health woes related to breast implants. The basic premises that Glassner covers are these:

1) Mass media creates panics & hysterias from a few isolated incidents. 2) Anecdotal evidence takes the place of hard scientific proof. 3) The experts that the media trots out to make comments really don't have the credentials to be considered an expert. 4) Entire categories of people are christened as "innately dangerous" (like the aforementioned teen moms and young black men)

Sometimes Glassner's tone towards media is very snide, which may turn the reader off. Nonetheless, I came away with a new distrust of nightly news magazines, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and others. Glassner goes for breadth rather than depth; many of the topics that he covered could be books in their own right. If you lean towards the Christian Conservative side, you won't like this book. Same goes for 2nd Amendment proponents, some Republicans and Libertarians.

In the course of reading Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear," I was surprised that Glassner took a more balanced view than I had at first expected. After being featured in left-wing muckracker, Michael Moore's latest film, "Bowling for Columbine," I had assumed Glassner, too, had produced a one-sided liberal rant about the corporate-controlled media interests. I was wrong.

While some of Glassner's conclusions may be questionable, like his statements without clear evidence that the availability of guns are almost entirely to blame for the nation's violence, much of his book is filled with example-after-example of familiar media-propagated scares of the 1990s along with well-researched statistics to debunk the myths. After reading the book, the pattern became clear of how the media spins its stories to make them deliberately misleading in order to sell fear and keep viewers and readers plugged in. I believe this educational experience has made me a more savvy and skeptical consumer of the news.

While Glassner's primary target in "The Culture of Fear" is the media, other groups are also shamed along the way (and they aren't all conservatives, either!) For instance, he spends a fair amount of time accusing feminists of propagating the silicone breast implant scares for symbolic gains even as study-after-study, some very large, involving tens of thousands of women showed no increased evidence of medical problems due to the implants.

One trend that I found amusing in many of the scares is that genuine experts are often ignored in the propagation of the fears. When genuine experts are consulted and disagree with the media's spin, their rational hard-facts explanations are often dismissed with a brush of the hand from the interviewer and followed by a, "but what about all the children?" or "but you can't deny people are suffering?" when there may be no connection between the suffering and the purported cause or the chances of the threat occurring being several times less likely than being struck by lightning. Instead, for airline safety stories, we rely on "seasoned traveler" Joe Blow, as if by riding an airplane a couple times a month Joe is an expert or we rely on college student and self-proclaimed researcher, Marty Rimm, for all that is known about Cyberporn and our children's exposure to it. (Rimm achieved earlier fame by manipulating the media in high school with a trumped-up scare of teenagers spending time in New Jersey casinos. Later debunked, you'd think the media would be more skeptical of him when he applied his manipulation tactics again.) The pattern is similar: when reporters are trying to propagate a scare, they find whomever they can to agree with their pre-decided point-of-view, not matter their dubious qualifications, and ignore anyone who casts doubt on the sensationalized arguments, regardless of their authority.

Yes, I am sure there are conclusions within the book that will make conservatives irate, like the observation that it is poverty that causes crime, not race or crack, but it is interesting to find out that in an era when crime rates were dropping, coverage of crime increased 600%, thus creating an impression on the public that crime is out of control. And, no, things aren't any worse now than they were before...a lot of bad things happened in the past, too, like kids killing kids, but it is the media coverage, not the trend that is growing.

Overall, it is a good read and well-documented. Most of the spin is transparent enough to separate it from the interesting factual data contained within it. If you are living in fear of terrorism or any of the other scare-du-jour, this book is definitely worth a read.

"We have the resources to feed, house, educate, insure, and disarm our communities if we resolve to do so....We can choose to redirect some...funds to combate serious dangers that threaten large numbers of people. At election time, we can choose candidates that proffer programs rather than scares." (p. 210)

With these concluding words, sociologist Barry Glassner underscores the basic premise of his book---Americans live in a culture in which extreme irrational fears are stoked while more serious (but less sexy) concerns are downplayed or ignored. Over the course of nine chapters, each focusing on a different "genre" of fear-mongering, Glassner dissects the most widely discussed terrors du jour (e.g., moral panics, violent crime, terrorism, infectious diseases like SARS, airplane crashes, etc.) and asks why it is that we tend to ignore serious, chronic, systemic problems like homelessness and malnutrition among American children in favor of flashy "threats" like West Nile Virus and school shootings.

His answer, such as it is, is that this culture of fear results from the intersection of political ideology, mass media pandering, and monomaniacal advocacy. So, for example, the obvious denominator common to all gun crimes, the relative ease with which guns can be acquired, is ignored or written-off in favor of moral or psychological explanations. That most child abuse, kidnapping, and murder occurs within the family unit gets less press than "don't talk to strangers," perhaps because we collectively fear what the examination of the "family" recommended by this data would reveal. SARS and West Nile Disease eclipse coverage of and response to a real killer, malaria; the spectacle of airplane crashes fills disproporationately more headlines than the far more risky rush hour commute; politicians pander to racist fears to win election. Glassner does an admirable job of debunking some very popular fears while also indicating more substantial concerns that require our attention.

The book is not perfect. His focus on systemic issues and his insistence that we use our national wealth for the benefit of all will rankle many who brace at this "liberalism" or "socialism." (To that, my response is that educating, feeding, housing, and immunizing children takes precendence over any ideological commitments, right or left, but I digress.) The book would definitely benefit from an update that takes into account the new-and-improved culture of fear we call "post-911 America." As well, perhaps Glassner or his editors felt that the book needed to be bigger, because the author spreads himself too thinly at times with the result that some chapters are less essential than others. My final criticism is that the book provides very little in terms of resources to respond to our culture of fear-mongering. How do we become more media savvy? How do we face up to "conservative" rhetoric that avoids systemic solutions to systemic problems? How do we become more "fear-proof" as individuals? A chapter on resources would be great in future editions.

In sum, this is a good antidote to much of the chicken-little behaviour that characterizes our national discourse and water cooler conversation. It is well-written and easily readable.

This is an in-depth examination of how our politicians and our news media use the stimulus of fear to achieve certain ends, and it stands as an invaluable work of media criticism, in an accessible style that is marred in a just few instances by prose that is broken by errors, or just weird.

Glassner explores the use of experts and secondary scholars, or people presenting themselves as such; specious ways of using statistics; non-scientific "studies"; using anecdotal and emotional material to trump scientific and statistical perspectives; and other ways of dramatizing the news so that broader and more challenging societal issues are pre-empted and other fears are overblown. Hence, we are very afraid of someone tampering with halloween candy, which is an exceedingly rare event; but we don't look at the fact that families abuse their own children in surprising numbers. Our attention is drawn away from systemic issues. Perhaps our country is not as scary as it appears on the evening news. However, there are people who profit from that perception.

Charging Glassner with a liberal bias (as several of the reviews here do) is a bit of a cheap shot, especially considering the fact that he frequently comes to the defense of major corporations, including commercial airlines and even the notorious Dow Corning, who were unjustly demonized because, well, that just made a better story.

The charge in one of these reviews that Glassner indicts the media for its conservative bias is off the wall. Glassner makes no mention of it, other than an acknowledgement that some reporters belonging to corporate-owned news outlets MIGHT think twice about reporting on stories reflecting badly on parent companies. That's not much of an indictment.

The scholarship is solid, and documented in copious footnotes using primary and reputable sources. It is, however, written for the general reader in a style that is warm and humorous. Recommended.

Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear" is a timely examination of the gluttonous Misinformation Age. Every day we are saturated with stories of freak accidents, diseases, and gruesome crimes, all of which are statistical anomalies. I'm reminded of the Newsweek cover that came out about ten years ago proclaiming that a woman over 35 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of getting married. That article, and others like it, lead Susan Faludi to write "Backlash", a groundbreaking look at how the media and institutions in power distort information. "The Culture of Fear" is just as groundbreaking and fascinating as Faludi's book. I'm sure sociology classes across the country are reading both of them.

One need only look at recent news reportage to see that Glassner has a vital point to be made. The child kidnappings over the recent summer dominated headlines and sensationalized news programs. Yet, as Glassner points out, of the 64 million kids in the US (1999 statistics) only about 200 a year are kidnapped by nonfamily members. The vast majority -- still only .001 of all children -- are kidnapped in custody disputes. None of this minimizes the pain of the families involved, but why do these stories tie up the news for months on end?

Consider the following contrast: on the day that Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her home, 30,000 children in the Third World died because they lacked the items of necessity that most US kids take for granted. Where is the coverage on this? Where is the outrage?

Glassner seems to believe that it is precisely the staggering state of crisis we live in that has lead to trivial and sensationalized news. The real ills of society -- corporate malfeasance, massive job insecurity, abusive families, addiction, imbalances of power both at home and abroad -- are simply too overwealming for an emotionally taxed culture to handle. Just as we grab for junk food because it's easier than preparing something better for us, we grab for junk news.

And, just as junk food is bad for us in the long run, so, says Glassner, is the state of the news. Our collective fears over the crime rates have lead to tougher penalties and more prisons, including tough sentences for comparitively minor crimes. The prevelence of guns, along with irrational fears about the likelihood of finding ourselves in peril, have made us the First World nation with the highest rates of handgun death, both homicide and suicide. And meanwhile, real outrages like the Enron scandal barely rate a mention in the voting booths. By feeding our irrational fears, we are ignoring the real problems that plague us.

"The Culture of Fear" is a fascinating and important book. It would be an excellent choice for book clubs and high school ethics classes.

To anyone who is disgusted with local news, can't watch CNN, and would rather read the Economist instead of US News, Time, and Newsweek, this might be the perfect book. The name is sort of a misnomer though. It should be called "Media of Fear". Nonetheless, it reinforces what I've felt all along, that the media and news are not out to report what's informative and worthy, but what is sexy - and that is fear. Even though this was written before 9/11, this is even more poignant now.

Glassner explains how the media ignores statistics and common sense in order to fill the airwaves and the printed word with scare tactics. He explains how the media, influenced by political groups and human interest stories, ignore the big picture and focus on anecdotal evidence in order to sell their fear. He provides many examples of this, from airplane crashes to vaccines, and explains how these unfounded fears come about. He carefully uses both concrete evidence and statistics to prove the media wrong, and explains why and how the media choose to report the way they do.

Unfortunately, for people like me who already agree with him, it doesn't provide much new information. Also, when he talks of the media, he talks of the supply side. He rarely mentions the demand side. Why is such media is actually being watched, and why are consumers falling for this, hook, line, and sinker?

Finally, the writing style is not altogether fluid. It's hard to describe, but it's not a real page turner.

All in all, it's a good book. It'll either confirm what you already know, or be an eye opener.

Mr. Glassner has renewed my enthusiasm for sociology as an academic discipline and has confirmed what I have long known about the media, as well as many forums of public discourse -- pseudoscares and fear mongering often dominate discussion at the expense of real issues of importance to the American public.

Although some chapters were more convincing than others and some potentially frightening topics (Y2K, global warming) noticably absent from his critique, Glassner's research is exhaustive and, despite what some of the reviews below have to say, extremely well documented.

To me, the most fascinating point raised by the book is Glassner's suggestion that America's obsession with hype and scary pseudodangers is really a kind of collective defense mechanism (my words) that keeps us from acknowledging the poor choices society as a whole has made in dealing with a multitude of issues ranging from social and economic disparity to parental responsibility for the welfare of our children.

To be blunt, if you have a thing for finger pointing and scapegoating, you won't enjoy this book. But, if you enjoy delving deeper into social issues than the superficial explanations proffered by the media and other sources of popular "knowledge," read The Culture of Fear.

Glassner's criticisms of the tendencies of our media and our politicians to hype alleged dangers fall on both the right and the left. Perhaps most important, he shows how America's leaders, and the people who elected them, are using these big scares to avoid talking about the real things wrong with our society. We worry about road rage instead of addressing serious transportation issues; worry about child kidnapping instead of about the lack of adequate food, housing, and health care for many of the nation's children; worry about crack cocaine instead of the vast numbers of people abusing alcohol and the lack of treatment for almost any drug problems.

One warning: if you love your gun, you won't like the book, because Glassner emphasizes that for many of our alleged violence problems, "IT'S THE GUNS, STUPID."

A quote that sums up the book: "We waste tens of billions of dollars and person-hours evry year on largely mythical hazards like road rage... on programs designed to protect young people from dangers that few of them ever face, on compensation for victims of metaphorical illnesses... We can choose to redirect some of those funds to combat serious dangers that threaten large numbers of people. At election time we can choose candidates that proffer programs rather than scares. Or we can go on believing in martian invaders."

This is an appallingly bad book. The underlying premise - that our lives are dominated by irrational, media-inflamed fears that cause us to act against our own best interests - undoubtedly has a lot of merit. An honest, thoughtful exploration of this topic could yield valuable insights into American life. But if you're looking for those insights, you won't find them here.

This train does not even get out of the station before it runs off the tracks. On page xv of the introduction Glassner says, "We had better learn to doubt our inflated fears before they destroy us." This is a perfect example of the kind of fear mongering the book purports to debunk, and it is a sign of what lies ahead.

Culture of Fear is riddled with flimsy logic, thin documentation and pure assertion. Glassner picks odd "fears" to focus on and then often fails to debunk them. For example, he decries concerns about single motherhood by citing reporting of clearly marginal critics who focus on the morality of single motherhood rather than its social and economic implications. Having focused on the wrong issue, he then "debunks" it by citing studies showing that life outcomes for children of single- and dual-parent families are comparable - given comparable economic circumstances. This is a tautology - the playing field is level as long as it's level. Glassner completely ignores the key issue - the differences in economic circumstances themselves. These circumstances clearly are better for women who complete their education and are married or at least in stable relationships (and thus benefit from the economic support of a partner) before becoming parents than they are for young women who begin having children before they finish high school. The playing field is not level at all.

Glassner devotes a few pages to the fear of pedophilic priests. (This book was published in 1999, before the true extent of the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal was fully known). He argues that the media inflated this fear through relentless coverage and reliance on excessive estimates. Of course, he cites only a single source to refute these estimates - a Catholic priest who was understandably troubled by the coverage. More importantly, he completely ignores the core reasons for entirely legitimate concern. It's not that people think all or most, or even many, priests are guilty, as he suggests. Rather, people are outraged because any incident of priestly abuse is violates a deep trust and because the Church hierarchy evidently knew about it and covered it up.

Elsewhere, Glassner focuses on fears that we are raising a generation of wild, violent children. The book was published shortly before Columbine, an event suggesting that these fears may not be so exaggerated. Glassner cites the horrific murder of a 3-year-old boy by two 10-year-olds in England, arguing that the media unjustifiably focused on concern that the murderers might represent a trend. The evidence Glassner cites in response consists entirely of a quote from a single British journalist relating a conversation she had about the crime with her 10-year-old son.

Meanwhile, Glassner almost completely ignores perhaps the most significant and over-inflated fear we have about our children - that they will be abducted (and worse) by a stranger. As I understand it, the per capita incidence of such crimes has not changed much over the years. What has changed is how extensively they are reported. Any parent can understand the fear these reports generate. But in the aggregate they have caused us to raise a generation of children who have not been allowed to go outside, explore their surroundings, take little risks and spontaneously make friends and play with them. The consequences of this change in child-rearing are yet to be understood. This would be a wonderful subject for a sociologist to explore. Glassner's exploration of this issue is a total of two pages long and is devoted entirely to the failure of two business that provided child-identification services (information that would argue against, rather than for, the proposition that this fear is over-inflated).

As flimsy as these sections of the book are, it gets worse. In the chapter on children, Glassner argues that our fears reflect our "unacknowledged guilt" over public policy. "By slashing spending on educational, medical and anti-poverty programs for youth," Glassner writes, "we adults have committed great violence against them. Yet rather than face up to our collective responsibility we project our violence onto young people themselves, and onto strangers we imagine will attack them." Where is the evidence for these assertions? Spending on the programs he cites has done nothing but increase over the years - any "slashing" has amounted only to reducing the rate of growth. The notion of guilt-transference is a psychobabble assertion made by the author without a shred of support..

Similarly, Glassner offers up gun control as the needed solution to a host of problems. I happen to agree with him that it is a good idea, but he presents it as a panacea without a bit of evidence. The book is riddled with unsupported assertions of this kind.

In the end, Culture of Fear is not a sociological study at all. Rather, it is mostly an editorial in favor of Glassner's political opinions. It is interesting to note that Glassner is a crony of, and has been highly influential on, filmmaker Michael Moore. The difference between them which works in Moore's favor, is that Moore makes no pretense of being anything other than an editorialist. He grabs facts that support his opinions, manipulates them to increase their emotional impact, and blithely ignores information that runs counter to his cause. Glassner does the same thing, but in the disappointing guise of social science.

There are interesting lessons to be learned from Culture of Fear, but they are not the ones Glassner intended. The fact that this book was released at all is a sad commentary on the state of the publishing industry. And the fact that it got remarkably good reviews from people who should know better is an even sadder comment on the state of thinking in America. The people who fall for this book are likely to be the same ones who fall for the over-hyped, irrational fears that are supposed to be its subject.

Barry Glassner's appearance in Micheal Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" made this book a hot sell among fans of the film. Glassner's insight into the fear injected into all Americans through the media via distorted statistics and blatant overcoverage is outrageous. His discussion of everything from plane crashes to portrayls of blacks, from effects of abotion to aliens leaves the reader in awe. Though even more in awe at the book's conclusion as he makes predictions about what may be necessary to unite a country divided over fear.