The Culture of Fear (50 page)

30
Farley, “Under a Cloud.”

31
On the power of personalization see Hans-Bernd Brosius and Anke Bathelt, “The Utility of Exemplars in Persuasive Communications,”
Communication Research
21 (1994): 48-78; Conrad Smith,
Media and Apocalyse
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992); Joel Best,
Images ofIssues
(Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995), esp. chs. 1, 2, 6, and 7. Examples of coverage of the McNitts: Doug Payne, “A Loving Family,”
Atlanta Constitution,
13 May 1996, p. A9; Gary Fields, “They Never Made It for Mother’s Day,”
USA Today,
13 May 1996, p. A4; “Educator Students Admired Died in Crash,”
New York Times,
14 May 1996, p. C20.

32
B. Drummond Ayers, “At the helm, a Pilot Who Lived to Fly,”
New York Times,
14 May 1996, p. C20; “Pilot and Husband Discussed Possibility of Dying in Air Crash,”
USA Today,
14 May 1996, p. A3.

33
Hedges, “What’s Wrong”; Gareth Cook, “Uncle Sam’s Not-So-Friendly Skies,”
Washington Monthly,
January 1996, pp. 9-16. See also “Warning: Pilot Error,” a three-part series in
USA Today,
September 26-28, 1995.

34
See statements to the press by FAA administrator David Hinson on June 17 and 18, 1996; Matthew Wald, “Aviations Agency Plans to Shift Its Mission, Focusing on Safety,”
New York Times,
19 June 1996, pp. A1 and C22.

35
“Serious”: see, e.g., Ralph Vartabedian, “34 Violations Found in Probe Before Shutdown,”
Los Angeles Times,
20 June 1996, p. D1; Michael Fumento, “Flight from Reality,” 7 October 1996, pp. 20-22. Aviation experts’ views: John Ritter, “Valujet’s Infractions Are Examined,”
USA Today,
20 June 1996, p. A3. On the accidents see also comments of Lewis Jordan and Valujet pilots on ABC’s “Nightline,” 21 June 1996.

36
ABC, “Nightline,” 16 May 1996.

37
Asra Nomani, “Valujet Shutdown Exposes Flaws of the FAA,”
Wall StreetJournal,
19 June 1996, pp. B1, 8; “The FAA Took Too Long to ‘Get’ the Lesson of the Valujet Crash,”
San Francisco Examiner,
20 June 1996, p. A18. Other examples: “FAA Damage Control,”
San
Diego
Union-Tribune,
20 June 1996, p. B12; “Time to Fix the FAA,” St.
Louis Post—Dispatch,
20 June 1996, p. B6; “FAA Took Too Long to See the Obvious,”
Hartford Courant,
19 June 1996, p. A10; ABC, “Nightline,” 17 June 1996. On legal limitations on grounding an airline see also Don Phillips, “Can Safety and Rapid Growth Share the Same Plane?”
Washington Post
National Edition, 17 June 1996, pp. 20—21.

38
ABC, “Nightline,” 17 June 1996.

39
See Ralph Vartabedian and Jesus Sanchez, “Carrier’s Success Story Was Built on Big Savings,”
Los Angeles Times,
20 June 1996, pp. D 1, 10.

40
Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH); speech by Joseph A. Dear at American Industrial Hygiene Conference, Washington, DC, 22 May 1996; Peter Dorman, Markets
and
Mortality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), quoted on p. 191. On my selection and use of statistics see note 2 in the Introduction.

41
Dorman,
Markets and Mortality,
p. 196; Michael Weisskopf and David Maraniss, “Ruling out OSHA” and “Industry’s Thumbprint on New OSHA Legislation,”
Washington Post
National Edition, 4 September 1995, pp. 6-9.

42
Frank Swoboda, “The Growing Problem of Workplace Safety,”
Nieman Reports
48 (1994): 11-12; Weisskopf and Maraniss, “Ruling Out”; Dorman,
Markets and Mortality,
chs. 1 and 6.

43
ABC was among the few major media that debunked the overregulation myth. See ABC, “World News Tonight,” 3 April 1995.

44
See Dear, speech at American Industrial Hygiene Conference. An article that did cover silicosis: Yvonne Daley, “Deadly Occupational Hazard Under Scrutiny,”
Boston Globe,
9 August 1998, p. D14.

45
Swoboda,
Nieman Reports.

46
Cook, “Uncle Sam’s.”

47
Beck, “How Safe.”

48
Church, “Ripped.”

49
K. C. Cole, “What’s the Price of Life?”
Los Angeles Times,
3 April 1997, p. B2.

1
Hadley Cantril,
The Invasion from Mars
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 3.

2
Michele Ingrassia, “Life Means Nothing,”
Newsweek,
19 July 1993, pp. 16-17;
Progressive,
July 1997, p. 9 (Clinton quote); Richard Cohen, “Dealing with Illegitimacy,”
Washington Post,
23 November 1993, p. A21; Charles Krauthammer, “Children of Cocaine,”
Washington Post,
30 July 1989, p. C7(“superpredators”). See also my discussions in chs. 4—6.

3
Ed Masley, “More Users Showing Signs of Compulsive Computer Behavior,”
Pittsburgh Post—Gazette,
27 February 1996, p. A1 (“smoker” quote); Amy Harmon, “Virtual Sex, Lies and Cyberspace,”
Los Angeles Times,
10 April 1997, p. A1, Carol Potera, “Trapped in the Web,”
Psychology Today,
March 1998, pp. 66-72; Gregory Crouch, “Cyber Junkies,”
Los Angeles Times,
11 May 1998, pp. E1, 4; Bill Hendrick, “Internet Addiction Is Serious,”
Atlanta Journal and Constitution,
17 August 1997, p. A1; Marilyn Elias, “Modem Matchmaking,”
USA Today,
14 August 1997, p. D1; Vincent Kiernan, “Some Scholars Question Research Methods of Expert on Internet Addiction,”
Chronicle of Higher Education,
29 May 1998, pp. 25-27.

4
Cantril,
Invasion from Mars,
p. 73; ABC, “20/20,” 30 June 1995; NBC, “Now,” 31 August 1994.

5
Cantril,
Invasion from Mars,
p. 68.

6
On American isolationism see David S. Wyman,
The Abandonment of theJews: America and the Holocaust
(New York: Pantheon, 1984); Bruce Russett,
No Clear and Present Danger
: A Skeptical View of the United States Entry into World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997); “Memories of War,”
Economist,
6 May 1995, pp. 21-23. Quotes: Cantril,
Invasion from Mars,
pp. 100, 160.

7
Cantril,
Invasion from Mars,
pp. 161-62.

8
I expect that some readers would prefer that this book end with a precise prescription for the steps we must take to rid our society of fear. But if the culture of fear operates anything like the way I suggest, a twelve-step program is not what is needed. Rather, on a persistent and widespread basis, we must resist the methods that fear mongers employ and spend our collective wealth on the abatement of genuine rather than fanciful dangers.

1
Katherine Kaufer Christoffel and Xavier Bosch, “Firearm-Related Homicides Among Teenagers and Young Adults,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
281 (1999): 323-324.

2
Marilyn Manson, “Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?”
Rolling Stone,
24 June 1999.

3
Maureen Dowd, “All that Glitters,”
New York Times,
3 October 2001.

4
Matthew Wald and Trymaine Lee, “50 Killed as Plane Hits House Near Buffalo,”
New York Times,
13 February 2009. Print coverage was in the February 14 issue.

5
Alan Levin, “In Buffalo, a Reminder of Lingering Air Safety Issues,”
USA Today,
16 February 2009.

6
This estimate is based on an analysis of Lexis-Nexis databases of a randomized sampling of ten months during the period 2000 through 2009. On the flexibility of fears and how they are defined and manipulated, see Zygmunt Bauman,
Liquid Fear
(Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2006).

7
CBS, “Morning News,” 7 June 2006.

8
Keith Naughton et al., “The Long and Grinding Road,”
Newsweek,
1 May 2006; CBS, “Morning News,” 7 June 2006; Dr. James Wright, “Coping with Modern Road Rage Crisis,”
Gold Coast Bulletin,
12 March 2008, p. 28.

9
OECD, “Society at a Glance, OECD Social Indicators,” Organisation for Economic and Cooperative Development, 2006; Catherine Saillant, “Testing the Bounds of MySpace,”
Los Angeles Times,
8 April 2006.

10
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Maltreatment 2006,
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/chapter3.htm#perp
; Mike Males, “Two More Reasons To Believe Nothing about Teens on News at 6,” 20 November 2007, posted at
YouthFacts.org
.

11
Janis Wolak, David Finkelhor et al., “Online ’Predators’ and Their Victims,”
American Psychologist,
63 (2008): 111-128.

12
Janis Wolak, Kimberly Mitchell, and David Finkelhor, “Online Victimization,” National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Alexandria, VA, 2006. And see Nancy Willard, “Stop internet fear-mongering,” posted at
www.connectsafely.org
.

13
Wolak, Finkelhor, “Online ‘Predators’”; “Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies,” Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, 2009, available at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/
.

14
Brad Stone, “Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown,”
New York Times,
13 January 2009.

15
Mizuko Ito, Heather Horst et al., “Living and Learning with New Media,” MacArthur Foundation Report, November 2008.

16
See also, “Using YouTube as a Study Aid,” Associated Press, 15 December 2008.

17
Barry Glassner, “Forever Amber,”
Wall Street Journal,
27 August 2002, p. D.8; “ National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children,
NISMART Bulletin,
October 2002; ‘Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report,” OJJDP, p. 44.

18
James Rainey, “Taking Comfort in Nancy Grace’s World,”
Los Angeles Times,
28 January 2009.

19
See
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/nancy.grace/
. Accessed 10 November 2008.

20
Timothy Griffin, Monica Miller et al., “A Preliminary Examination of Amber Alert’s Effects,”
Criminal Justice
Policy Review 18 (2007): 378-394.

21
James Allan Fox, “Amber Alert’s Dangers,”
New York Times,
17 August 2002. For another example, see “Revisit Jessica’s Law,”
Los Angeles Times,
19 January 2009.

22
“An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries,” UNICEF, 2007.

23
NBC, “Today,” “A Katie Couric Special: The 411: Teens and Sex,” 27 January 2005.

24
Mike Males, “‘Tween Sex, Dating Violence Survey Finds Hardly Any,” 24 February 2008,
YouthFacts.org
. Accessed 12 July 2008.

25
See
Entertainment Magazine,
“New Survey of American Teens Reveals Shocking Levels of Teen Dating Abuse and Violence,” 25 April 2006,
http://emol.org/emclub/?q=teendatingviolence
.

26
For this and numerous other heartening indicators about contemporary American youths (e.g., cigarette and other drug use and violent crime), see the annual reports throughout the decade published by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics and titled “America’s Children In Brief,” available at
www.childstats.gov
.

27
Kathleen Kingsbury, “Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High,”
Time,
18 June 2008.

28
Mike Males, “The Real Mistake in Teen Pregnancy,”
Los Angeles Times,
13 July 2008. On another latter-day teen sex scare, “sexting,” see Carl Bialik, “Which Is Epidemic—Sexting or Worrying About It?,”
Wall StreetJournal,
8 April 2009.

29
Veronica Cassidy, “Media’s ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Fantasies,”
Extra Magazine,
October 2008.

30
Saad Bin Omer, K.S. Enger et al., “Geographical Clustering of Nonmedical Exemptions to School Immunization Requirements and its Associations with Geographical Clustering of Pertussis Cases,”
American Journal of Epidemiology
168 (2008): 1389-96; Daniel Feikin, Dennis Lezotte et al., “Individual and Community Risks of Measles and Pertussis Associated With Personal Exemptions to Immunization,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
284 (2000): 3145-50; Saad Bin Omer, William Pan et al., “Nonmedical Exemptions to School Immunization Requirements: Secular Trends and Association of State Policies With Pertussis Incidence,”
JAMA
296 (2006): 1757-63.

31
See for example, Susan King, “Vaccination Policies: Individual Rights υ Community Health,”
British Medical Journal
319 (1999): 1448-49; Robert J. Leggiadro, “Vaccine Refusal, Mandatory Immunization, and the Risk of Vaccine Preventable Diseases,”
The Pediatric Infectious DiseaseJournal
28 (2009): 613; Anita Manning, “Hib Infection in Children Makes A Deadly Return,”
USA Today,
16 February 2009; Jill Adams, “One Disease’s Encore,”
Los Angeles Times,
23 February 2009; Liz Szabo, “Whooping Cough Returns in Children,”
USA Today,
26 May 2009.

32
See for example, Anders Hviid, Michael Stellfeld et al., “Association Between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccine and Autism,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
290 (2003): 1763-66; Robert Schechter and Judith Grether, “Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
65 (2008): 19-24. Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim, “Eli Stone Pilot,” original airdate, 31 January 2008, 10:00 p.m. (ABC). Transcript provided by “Twiz Tv.Com-Free Tv Scripts Database.” Originally transcribed for
www.Eli-Stone.org
.