Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2012 2:43:54 GMT -5
Hi guys! I need help again on a paper for my Writing 121 class. This time, I am suppose to type a paper that is divided into two parts. The first half is supposed to be a summarization of the tenth chapter of Glassner's book The Culture of Fear. I am then suppose to fluidly trasit to my other half, in which I present my own examples and research sources concerning the main topic of the chapter. Those are the basic instructions for the assignment. On another note, it is due this Sunday at 11pm, but I would like to get it done as soon as possible since I have to work during the weekend.
Please go over my paper and let me know how well I did. Pointers on how to improve it would be awesome:
Commentary on Post-9/11 Scaremongering
Fear is something that has always dominated our mainstream media, but it became unimaginatively prevalent in the years that followed the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. People became intensely afraid of terrorism during those years, and the media was all too happy to add wood to an already blazing fire. Not only did fear of terrorism arise, but already existing fears (ranging from crime, to youths, to plane crashes, etc.) intensified as well. It is the media’s use of scaremongering in the post-9/11 era that Barry Glassner takes on within chapter 10 of his book The Culture of Fear. In the chapter, he breaks down how such issues (especially terrorism) are exaggerated and overrepresented to scare the masses to keep them in check. While he first takes on several issues that the media has propagated over the years, but then he jumps to the heart of it all and discusses post-9/11 paranoia and the government and media’s roles in it.
He opens up the chapter by reflection on how it would take another “Pearl Harbor” like incident to plunge our media and society into fear; this event would be the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the wake of the chaos that day brought, the media for a time focused on terrorism alone; it was only after covering that issue for months did they brought back the old fears with a vengeance. Such fear would include plane crashes and road rage, and with stories like 9/11 and the 2009 Buffalo, New York plane, the media was quick to raise public fears on flying. After 9/11, it was a surprise to see that fear of flying went down due to a lack of plane crash stories over the years; it was only after the 2009 incident did such a fear become more prevalent. As for road rage, the statistics showed that it remained low as always, but media outlets (such as magazines, newspapers, and television stories) prominently featured road rage through the first decade of the 2000’s.
With the rise of the Internet throughout those years, it raised concern about the safety of minors that used it. The media stirred fear about children and adolescents falling victim to sexual predators online, which caused parents to monitor their children’s online activity. Accompanying this was the fear of missing children, which the media exploited through notable missing child cases as Caylee Anthony and Madeleine McCann. Glassner points out the reality that youths are much more likely to be sexually abused and/or abducted by a relative or caregiver than a stranger they meet online; in fact, most strangers that youths “meet” online do not make arrangements to meet in person (in other words, they just keep their communication online). Glassner than stresses that impoverished children is a much greater issue to address, yet the media does not do enough coverage on it to spread efficient awareness.
Glassner than covers the issues of wild teen behavior and fear of “perpetuated epidemics” that people seem to have become more worried about in the past decade than ever before. The media will cover stories about teens rampantly sexting and engaging in other sexual acts, such as this one high school in which a “bunch of teen girls made a pregnancy pact.” Glassner shares the fact that while the media made that story a shocking headline, CNN dug deep into the story to discover that there really was no pact and that the several pregnant teens agreed to help bring up each other’s children “only after they’d learn that they were pregnant” (224). After this, Glassner then covers “perpetuated epidemics” by noting that while the MMR vaccine scare had turned parents away from giving it to their children, the studies that were done showed no conclusive evidence that the vaccine causes autism.
Finally, before touching back upon the heart of his chapter’s main topic, Glassner tackles fear of crime in the post-9/11 world. With such tragic school shootings like Columbine and Virginia Tech, people became afraid became more afraid of violent crime happening in schools and in neighborhoods. Glassner gracefully points out that in a 2004 study, it was shown that “In the nation’s largest cities, murder only accounted for .2 percent of all crimes” (230); ironic, considering that murder accounted for “36 percent of the crimes reported on the TV news” (230). He then points out that while a lot more blame goes into other factors (such as television violence) when a shooting tragedy occurs, he stresses that more attention needs to be given to the availability of firearms; that people with a troubled background should have much more difficulty at accessing them.
After covering those issues of the past decade, he finally gets into discussing the ultimate fear that has plagued our country since 9/11: terrorism. People were in constant fear of another terrorist attack striking the nation, and such fear was propelled by the media with messages such as “9/11 could happen again.” It was from that notion alone that the Bush Administration used to gain support, which proved to be efficient by how George W. Bush won re-election as president in 2004. Glassner states that despite the paranoia during those years, the odds of an average American citizen being either injured or killed by a terrorist attack is “less than from everyday dangers such as accidents and hypertension” (236). He even goes as far that if terrorists were to launch another major attack, say through detonating a nuclear weapon, the death toll would be no higher than 250,000. As grim as that would be, he expressed our country has endured greater casualties, such as the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 that killed 600,000 in the United States alone.
Still, Americans were terrified, and went as far as gave support for the Bush Administration’s worldwide “War on Terror,” which led our country into military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Media kept reminding the American people that “there are monsters all around us” and that highly-trained terrorists were coming to get us. With that being a frequent notion, Glassner stated the questions that skeptics asked about such “terrorist threats” like ““Why hadn’t terrorists blown up freeways or bridges? Poisoned the water supply? Gassed the subway? Grabbed an automatic weapon and shot up a mall?” (237). Glassner answers these questions by saying that such terrorists do not exist and that it is a fear ploy that the media uses to rally support for the government; for it is only through fear that the government can have the people under its control.
Glassner than concludes both the chapter and the revised edition of his book on a message of hope. He discusses that Barack H. Obama is elected president in 2009 by his campaign of hope, the exact opposite of the fear campaign that Bush used to get re-elected in ’04. During Obama’s campaign, his wife Michelle gives a speech on hope during an interview; saying that our nation should no longer live in fear. After sharing the speech, Glassner concludes his work by stating “May her words reverberate well into the future” (244).
While it is easy to believe in the things that the media tells about post-9/11 terrorism, it is a crucial task to examine how the media delivers its news and obscures its agenda. With chapter ten of The Culture of Fear, Glassner identifies just how fear of terrorism has molded our new way of life in the new millennium. He argues that our media has exploited the tragedy of 9/11 to the point in which Americans developed a phobia of terrorism. Such a phobia is actually doing more harm for this country than good and that it is time we turn to a direction of hope. Upon doing some critical research, I found several other writers who agree with Glassner on how post-9/11 paranoia has been blown out of proportions.
In his article, “The American Way of War”, Andrew Bacevich of the London Review of Books discusses how fear was used to get America to support the “War on Terror.” He points to how the Bush administration’s agenda could not have been carried out successfully without the use of scaremongering. Bacevich makes this clear with two notions that the Bush administration had in mind: “The first is for the state to persuade the people that the country faces an existential threat” and “The second way is for the state to insulate the people from war’s effects, thereby freeing itself from constraints. A people untouched (or seemingly untouched) by war are far less likely to care about it.” Such tactics are what got us into the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan; we may have pulled out from Iraq, but it will still be a while before we can pull out of Afghanistan as well.
The next article I read was by political consultant Naomi Wolf, which was entitled “The Spectacle of Terror and Its Interests” and featured in the UK’s The Guardian. Within it, she tells about how the government gets the media to raise up the fear factor when it is “needed the most.” Such times may be when the government wants to introduce a new anti-terrorism tactic, and so they feel that fear must be stirred so that they may get support for it. An example of this is with the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber, an alleged terrorist who somehow managed to make it past airport security and board an airplane with a “bomb” in his undergarments. The story itself seems both strange and ridiculous, but almost immediately following it, the Department of Homeland Security announces that they will then be installing full-body scanners into airports. This cannot be a coincidence, seeing as to how they likely spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars working on such scanners; only after such an incident occurs do they decide to go ahead with the scanners. Wolf acknowledges this suspiciousness by stating “As with so many of these stories, we have no independent verification – because reporters from the British Daily Telegraph, to Reuters, to the Huffington Post are simply taking dictation from New York Representative Peter King and from the Pentagon, and scarcely asking for backup evidence of their elaborate assertions.” She is so spot on with those words, for the government will obscure any and all backup evidence to keep the general public from realizing their true aims.
Then my next source is an article entitled “The Endless Fear”, which was written by John Tierney for the New York Times. He discusses how our terrorism phobia is more of a matter of perception than it is reality; it is all media propaganda that never amounts to anything. Since 9/11, we have seen no successful terrorist (or Islamist to be more specific) attacks carried out in this country, to which Tierney states “you don’t see a clear sign that things are getting worse.”
Finally, I had gone over a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Faludi, which is entitled The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. In the book, Faludi entails how 9/11 changed our perception of the world and, for a short time, lead to our nation to putting greater emphasis on conservative values. The media was in favor of men becoming more manly again (serving as protectors of our society, via firefighters and police officers), while encourage women to become subservient again. Fear was being pushed that it was liberalism that had brought the terrorist attack; that our country would have been less likely targeted if we had been more conservative.
Such feelings of fear and hindsight led to accusations being flown about on how the United States became a target for such an attack. An example would be the Reverend Jerry Falwell accusing pagans, abortionists, feminists, and homosexuals for causing the nation to “fall from God’s grace.” In retrospect of such tension at that time, the tragedy also triggered a rise in the fantasy that our nation is a vigilant warrior that will take up arms against all of its foes. Yet, as nice of a distraction that was from the turmoil, Faludi states “But rather than make us safer, it misled us into danger, damaging the very security the myth was supposed to bolster” (Faludi, 2007, pg. 289).
In spite of all the hype and scaremongering over the years, our nation is not only moving past the tragedy, but is beginning to realize that the media exploits tragedies. 9/11 was truly a horrific event, but it is proving harmful for our nation’s well-being to keep playing up the slim possibility of another attack. If we wish to remain strong as a nation, we must be brave and not succumb to fear; hope is the only thing that can ensure us a better tomorrow.
Please go over my paper and let me know how well I did. Pointers on how to improve it would be awesome:
Commentary on Post-9/11 Scaremongering
Fear is something that has always dominated our mainstream media, but it became unimaginatively prevalent in the years that followed the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. People became intensely afraid of terrorism during those years, and the media was all too happy to add wood to an already blazing fire. Not only did fear of terrorism arise, but already existing fears (ranging from crime, to youths, to plane crashes, etc.) intensified as well. It is the media’s use of scaremongering in the post-9/11 era that Barry Glassner takes on within chapter 10 of his book The Culture of Fear. In the chapter, he breaks down how such issues (especially terrorism) are exaggerated and overrepresented to scare the masses to keep them in check. While he first takes on several issues that the media has propagated over the years, but then he jumps to the heart of it all and discusses post-9/11 paranoia and the government and media’s roles in it.
He opens up the chapter by reflection on how it would take another “Pearl Harbor” like incident to plunge our media and society into fear; this event would be the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the wake of the chaos that day brought, the media for a time focused on terrorism alone; it was only after covering that issue for months did they brought back the old fears with a vengeance. Such fear would include plane crashes and road rage, and with stories like 9/11 and the 2009 Buffalo, New York plane, the media was quick to raise public fears on flying. After 9/11, it was a surprise to see that fear of flying went down due to a lack of plane crash stories over the years; it was only after the 2009 incident did such a fear become more prevalent. As for road rage, the statistics showed that it remained low as always, but media outlets (such as magazines, newspapers, and television stories) prominently featured road rage through the first decade of the 2000’s.
With the rise of the Internet throughout those years, it raised concern about the safety of minors that used it. The media stirred fear about children and adolescents falling victim to sexual predators online, which caused parents to monitor their children’s online activity. Accompanying this was the fear of missing children, which the media exploited through notable missing child cases as Caylee Anthony and Madeleine McCann. Glassner points out the reality that youths are much more likely to be sexually abused and/or abducted by a relative or caregiver than a stranger they meet online; in fact, most strangers that youths “meet” online do not make arrangements to meet in person (in other words, they just keep their communication online). Glassner than stresses that impoverished children is a much greater issue to address, yet the media does not do enough coverage on it to spread efficient awareness.
Glassner than covers the issues of wild teen behavior and fear of “perpetuated epidemics” that people seem to have become more worried about in the past decade than ever before. The media will cover stories about teens rampantly sexting and engaging in other sexual acts, such as this one high school in which a “bunch of teen girls made a pregnancy pact.” Glassner shares the fact that while the media made that story a shocking headline, CNN dug deep into the story to discover that there really was no pact and that the several pregnant teens agreed to help bring up each other’s children “only after they’d learn that they were pregnant” (224). After this, Glassner then covers “perpetuated epidemics” by noting that while the MMR vaccine scare had turned parents away from giving it to their children, the studies that were done showed no conclusive evidence that the vaccine causes autism.
Finally, before touching back upon the heart of his chapter’s main topic, Glassner tackles fear of crime in the post-9/11 world. With such tragic school shootings like Columbine and Virginia Tech, people became afraid became more afraid of violent crime happening in schools and in neighborhoods. Glassner gracefully points out that in a 2004 study, it was shown that “In the nation’s largest cities, murder only accounted for .2 percent of all crimes” (230); ironic, considering that murder accounted for “36 percent of the crimes reported on the TV news” (230). He then points out that while a lot more blame goes into other factors (such as television violence) when a shooting tragedy occurs, he stresses that more attention needs to be given to the availability of firearms; that people with a troubled background should have much more difficulty at accessing them.
After covering those issues of the past decade, he finally gets into discussing the ultimate fear that has plagued our country since 9/11: terrorism. People were in constant fear of another terrorist attack striking the nation, and such fear was propelled by the media with messages such as “9/11 could happen again.” It was from that notion alone that the Bush Administration used to gain support, which proved to be efficient by how George W. Bush won re-election as president in 2004. Glassner states that despite the paranoia during those years, the odds of an average American citizen being either injured or killed by a terrorist attack is “less than from everyday dangers such as accidents and hypertension” (236). He even goes as far that if terrorists were to launch another major attack, say through detonating a nuclear weapon, the death toll would be no higher than 250,000. As grim as that would be, he expressed our country has endured greater casualties, such as the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 that killed 600,000 in the United States alone.
Still, Americans were terrified, and went as far as gave support for the Bush Administration’s worldwide “War on Terror,” which led our country into military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Media kept reminding the American people that “there are monsters all around us” and that highly-trained terrorists were coming to get us. With that being a frequent notion, Glassner stated the questions that skeptics asked about such “terrorist threats” like ““Why hadn’t terrorists blown up freeways or bridges? Poisoned the water supply? Gassed the subway? Grabbed an automatic weapon and shot up a mall?” (237). Glassner answers these questions by saying that such terrorists do not exist and that it is a fear ploy that the media uses to rally support for the government; for it is only through fear that the government can have the people under its control.
Glassner than concludes both the chapter and the revised edition of his book on a message of hope. He discusses that Barack H. Obama is elected president in 2009 by his campaign of hope, the exact opposite of the fear campaign that Bush used to get re-elected in ’04. During Obama’s campaign, his wife Michelle gives a speech on hope during an interview; saying that our nation should no longer live in fear. After sharing the speech, Glassner concludes his work by stating “May her words reverberate well into the future” (244).
While it is easy to believe in the things that the media tells about post-9/11 terrorism, it is a crucial task to examine how the media delivers its news and obscures its agenda. With chapter ten of The Culture of Fear, Glassner identifies just how fear of terrorism has molded our new way of life in the new millennium. He argues that our media has exploited the tragedy of 9/11 to the point in which Americans developed a phobia of terrorism. Such a phobia is actually doing more harm for this country than good and that it is time we turn to a direction of hope. Upon doing some critical research, I found several other writers who agree with Glassner on how post-9/11 paranoia has been blown out of proportions.
In his article, “The American Way of War”, Andrew Bacevich of the London Review of Books discusses how fear was used to get America to support the “War on Terror.” He points to how the Bush administration’s agenda could not have been carried out successfully without the use of scaremongering. Bacevich makes this clear with two notions that the Bush administration had in mind: “The first is for the state to persuade the people that the country faces an existential threat” and “The second way is for the state to insulate the people from war’s effects, thereby freeing itself from constraints. A people untouched (or seemingly untouched) by war are far less likely to care about it.” Such tactics are what got us into the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan; we may have pulled out from Iraq, but it will still be a while before we can pull out of Afghanistan as well.
The next article I read was by political consultant Naomi Wolf, which was entitled “The Spectacle of Terror and Its Interests” and featured in the UK’s The Guardian. Within it, she tells about how the government gets the media to raise up the fear factor when it is “needed the most.” Such times may be when the government wants to introduce a new anti-terrorism tactic, and so they feel that fear must be stirred so that they may get support for it. An example of this is with the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber, an alleged terrorist who somehow managed to make it past airport security and board an airplane with a “bomb” in his undergarments. The story itself seems both strange and ridiculous, but almost immediately following it, the Department of Homeland Security announces that they will then be installing full-body scanners into airports. This cannot be a coincidence, seeing as to how they likely spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars working on such scanners; only after such an incident occurs do they decide to go ahead with the scanners. Wolf acknowledges this suspiciousness by stating “As with so many of these stories, we have no independent verification – because reporters from the British Daily Telegraph, to Reuters, to the Huffington Post are simply taking dictation from New York Representative Peter King and from the Pentagon, and scarcely asking for backup evidence of their elaborate assertions.” She is so spot on with those words, for the government will obscure any and all backup evidence to keep the general public from realizing their true aims.
Then my next source is an article entitled “The Endless Fear”, which was written by John Tierney for the New York Times. He discusses how our terrorism phobia is more of a matter of perception than it is reality; it is all media propaganda that never amounts to anything. Since 9/11, we have seen no successful terrorist (or Islamist to be more specific) attacks carried out in this country, to which Tierney states “you don’t see a clear sign that things are getting worse.”
Finally, I had gone over a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Faludi, which is entitled The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. In the book, Faludi entails how 9/11 changed our perception of the world and, for a short time, lead to our nation to putting greater emphasis on conservative values. The media was in favor of men becoming more manly again (serving as protectors of our society, via firefighters and police officers), while encourage women to become subservient again. Fear was being pushed that it was liberalism that had brought the terrorist attack; that our country would have been less likely targeted if we had been more conservative.
Such feelings of fear and hindsight led to accusations being flown about on how the United States became a target for such an attack. An example would be the Reverend Jerry Falwell accusing pagans, abortionists, feminists, and homosexuals for causing the nation to “fall from God’s grace.” In retrospect of such tension at that time, the tragedy also triggered a rise in the fantasy that our nation is a vigilant warrior that will take up arms against all of its foes. Yet, as nice of a distraction that was from the turmoil, Faludi states “But rather than make us safer, it misled us into danger, damaging the very security the myth was supposed to bolster” (Faludi, 2007, pg. 289).
In spite of all the hype and scaremongering over the years, our nation is not only moving past the tragedy, but is beginning to realize that the media exploits tragedies. 9/11 was truly a horrific event, but it is proving harmful for our nation’s well-being to keep playing up the slim possibility of another attack. If we wish to remain strong as a nation, we must be brave and not succumb to fear; hope is the only thing that can ensure us a better tomorrow.
Though, I may send you a revised version of the essay.