Over the past month or so, i've spent a considerable amount of time researching fear within society. Heres is the collection of my thoughts thus far. I will edit this as more information comes to light, for as long as this interest sustains itself. Enjoy.

You can see the threads which evolved surroundings these writings via these two links. 1] Do We Fear The Wrong Things 2] Fear & News

Do We Fear The Wrong Things?

Recently, i've been fascinated by fear. Not necessarily, horror film, axe murder fear (although more on that later) or scary hairy spider fear; but societies anxieties. The things that we collectively fear.

After some research, it's become clear that the majority of fears are unfounded. Writer and acclaimed researcher, Barry Glasner, also thinks so. Now, due to the nature of the statistics i've been able to unearth, we will be largely looking at America.

Fear of crime
Crime rates plunged throughout America for the majority of the 1990's. Yet, at the time, over two thirds of Americans believed they were soaring. By 1995, 62% of Americans described the status of crime rates as "truly desperate", almost twice as many as did in the late 1980's, when crime rates were actually higher.

A survey conducted in 1997 showed that more than half of Americans disagreed with the statement "This country is finally beginning to make some progress in solving the crime problem". Yet, at the time, crime rates had fallen consecutively for a half dozen years.

Fear of crime far outweighs incident of crime, yet it hasn't always been this way. What change has occurred to cause this "culture of fear"?

Fear of youths
There has been a steep downward trend in youth crime throughout the 1990''s. Yet it seems that these comforting statistics, are either ignored, or unheard. Adult Americans estimate that people under 18 commit about half of all violent crimes. The true percentage is much closer to 13%.

Bill Clinton said in 1997 that "We know we've got about six years to turn this juvenile crime thing around or our country is going to be living with chaos". The youth violent crime rate had fallen 9.2% from the previous year.

Violence related deaths in schools dropped to a record low during the 1996-1997 academic year. Yet during the same year, Time magazine ran an articles with headlines such as "Teenage Time Bomb" and "Children Without Souls".

What "should" be feared?
It seems to me as if the things that are truly worthy of fear, are those that go the least talked about. You are far more likely to die in a motoring accident, than be killed by violent crime for instance.

Fear is also often, "misplaced". After a series of school shootings in America, the New York Post ran articles with headlines such as "It's Not Guns, It's Killer Kids" and "Guns Aren't The Problem". Yet statistics indicate that guns are indeed the problem.

In America, more guns are stolen from owners each year, than other countries have gun owners. In America, private citizens own approximately a quarter billion guns. In America, 15000 people are killed each year with guns, 18000 commit suicide, and another 1500 die accidentally from firearms each year. In other nations like Australia and Japan, no more than a few dozen in total die from guns each year. American children are 12 times more likely to die from gun injuries than children from any other industrialized nation.

Fear, News & Personal Experience

News coverage has been shown to have a direct effect in levels of fear and anxiety regarding issues and problems prevalent today. Should it be this way?

Personal Experience Versus News Coverage
University professor Esther Madriz has conducted surveys which have proven disproportionate news coverage to have a direct impact on the fears of it's readers and viewers. When she interviewed Americans about their fears of crime, they often responded with the phrase, "I saw it in the news".

The interviewees identified the news media as both the source of their fears, and the reason they thought those fears were valid. A national poll asked "Why do you think America has a serious crime problem". 76% of people responded with citations of stories they had seen in the media. Only 22% offered any personal experience or insight.

Furthermore, professors Robert Blendon and John Young of Harvard collaborated to analyse 47 surveys regarding drug abuse conducted between 1978 and 1997. They also discovered that news media, rather than personal experience provided America with their predominant fears. 8 out of 10 adults claim that drug abuse has never caused problems within their families. The vast majority report relatively little direct experience with problems related to drugs. So why then, do the vast majority of Americans think that drugs pose one of the biggest threats to American society today. It seems irrefutable that fear stems from scare campaigns in the news media, specifically televised news.

Disproportionate Media Coverage
It seems that television news programs survive on scares. Producers live by the dictum "If it bleeds, it leads". Drug, crime and disaster stories make up most of the news portion of televised broadcasts.

Between 1990 and 1998, when America's murder rate declined by over 20%, the number of murder stories on network news increased by 600%. Surely news networks shouldn't be allowed to air such disproportionate coverage of events.

Scaremongering Statistics
One infamous incident occurred in 1998; Barbra Walters made the following overtly romanticist claims on ABC: "It can happen in a flash. Fire breaks out on the operating table. The patient is surrounded by flames...". She continued to say it happens "more often than you might think". Per year, out of all surgeries, the chances of fire breaking out are approximately 0.000007%.

When doctors wrote back to the news network alerting them to the extreme rarity of the incidents, the network responded showing pictures of the victims, claiming "this is for those trying to marginalise this issue". Whilst at first instance, it may seem like the new network has a point. It doesn't. Emotion does not negate rationality.

In 1994, there was mass panic over the "flesh eating bacteria". News media ran stories claiming that it was "spreading like underground fires", claiming it the virus to breed rapidly to reach over "billions of flesh eating bacteria". The bacteria was even described as a "merciless killer" by some networks.

During these coverages, news media ran footage of science fiction films. This became known as the "Cuisinart Effect". For example, a report by Dateline on deaths in Zaire, intersected clips from the film Outbreak. The plot of Outbreak featured a virus that threatened to wipe out the entire human race. Throughout the report, dialogue such as "We can't stop it!" was sampled.

When medical authorities contacted the news networks, informing them that an American is over 55 times more likely to be struck by lightning, they were ignored. Or ridiculed, a similar "emotional" approach was used to rebut their claims as in the Barbara Walters incident I mentioned earlier.