As of now, most of what Barry Glassner's novel, The Culture of Fear, speaks of is how the media is a master manipulator that tends to turn small concerns to major anxieties, all for the purpose of avoiding the real issues. The novel notes that one of the real issues is not "scary kids" per se but the guns they use to successfully commit violent acts; "as we have seen the ready availability of guns also accounts for most teen homicides and many fatal accidents." Another problem the book addresses is the incredibility of the people who promote certain fears just to get their 15 minutes, like Marty Rimm and his inaccurate pornography research; "Rimm's exclusivity agreement with Time ensured that the true experts on computer networks could neither see nor comment on his study until the magazine hit the stands." Further in the reading Glassner's novel gives accounts of the fear of bad mothers in particular, who beat and murder their children and spouses. The real issue however is that most women lash out as a reaction to what they experience within their lifetime, and in fact "the most brutal, terrorizing, and continuing pattern of harmful intimate violence is carried out primarily by men," although many fail to realize this. Whatever the reason, people tend to go along with what the media feeds them. And, even after it has been proven wrong time and time again, "fear mongers do not have to stop performing their hocus-pocus just because their secrets have been revealed."
- Why does the media avoid the most problematic issues, if it doesn't have to fix them?
4 comments:
I think the media avoids the most problematic issues, even if they do not have to fix them because the other issues like teen suicide and homicides seem more attention grabbing than issues that are problematic such as gun violence. The media is able to capture more audiences through things that Americans fear than the most problematic issues. It is also hard for the media to stretch the truth and make the most problematic issues interesting for the audience to pay any attention to it.
I think the media avoids problematic issues because to them its all about the most ratings and money. By bringing attention to unncessary things it keeps the attention off of the more important things.Such as poltics, gun use, or even the world.
The media avoids the most problematic problems because it only covers things that will attract the attention of people. They only care about the ratings. They will purposely exaggerate meaningless things just to get the viewers' attention. They just cover stories that cause emotion, and usually those are meaningless problems.
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