The Culture of Fear (41 page)

7
Anastasia Toufexis, “Workers Who Fight Firing with Fire,”
Time,
25 April 1994, pp. 35—37.

8
Lara Wozniak, “Violence Growing as a Job Hazard,”
St. Petersburg Times,
28 August 1994, p. H1. See also Tom Dunkel, “Newest Danger Zone: Your Office,”
Working Woman
19 (1994): 38—45.

9
Erik Larson, “A False Crisis: How Workplace Violence Became a Hot Issue,”
Wall StreetJournal,
13 October 1994, pp. A1, 8. See also “Taxi Driving Termed Riskiest Job in U.S.,”
New York Times,
9 July 1996, p. A9; Marlene Cimons, “Coping with Working Under the Gun, Literally,”
Los Angeles Times,
11 June 1998, p. A5; Greg Warchol,
Workplace Violence, 1992—96
(Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 1998).

10
Donna Rosato, “New Industry Helps Managers Fight Violence,”
USA Today,
5 August 1995.

11
“Violence in the Workplace Becoming More of a Problem,” Associated Press, 10 September 1995; Kirstin Downey Grimsley, “Risk of Homicide Is Higher in Retail Jobs,”
Washington Post,
13 July 1997, p. A14; Larson, “False Crisis.”

12
See also Janice Lewis, “Workplace Violence,”
RQ
22 March 1995, p. 287.

13
See Mary Ellen Schoonmaker, “Is There Life After Layoff?”
Columbia Journalism Review
(May 1996): 48-52; Seth Mydans, “Los Angeles Times Announces Plans for 450 Layoffs,”
New York Times,
19 July 1995, p. A9; James Barron, “For News Employees, Thin Envelope Is Knife,”
New York Times,
8 January 1993, p. B2; Sydney Schanberg, “The Murder of New York Newsday,”
Washington Monthly
(March 1996): 29-34.

14
Louis Uchitelle and N. R. Kleinfield, “On the Battlefields of Business, Millions of Casualties,”
New York Times,
3 March 1996, pp. A1, 14—17. On limitations in the
Times
series see Janine Jackson, “We Feel Your Pain,”
Extra,
May 1996, pp. 11-12. Crime sta tistics derived from Bureau of Justice Statistics reports. Specific victimization estimates based on Uchitelle and Kleinfield, “Battlefields of Business,” and Ray Surette, “Predator Criminals as Media Icons,” in Gregg Barak, ed.,
Media, Process, and the Social Construction of Crime
(New York: Garland, 1994), pp. 131-58.

15
Downsizing effects: Barry Glassner,
Career Crash
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994); Uchitelle and Kleinfield, “Battlefields of Business”; David Gordon,
Fat and Mean
(New York: Free Press, 1996); Paul Krugman, “Superiority Complex,”
New Republic,
1 November 1997, pp. 20-21. Continuation of the trend: Robert Reich, “Broken Faith,”
Nation,
16 February 1998, pp. 11-17; Aaron Bernstein, “Who Says Job Anxiety Is Easing?”
Business Week,
7 April 1997, p. 38. Amount of coverage: Barbara Bliss Osborn, “If It Bleeds, It Leads,” Extra, September 1994, p. 15; Larry Platt, “Prime Suspects,”
Philadelphia Magazine,
November 1994, pp. 90-93, 119; Roy Edward Lotz,
Crime and the American Press
(New York: Praeger, 1991), pp. 2-3; Mark Fitzgerald, “Newspapers and Violence Coverage,”
Editor and Publisher,
18 June 1994, pp. 14, 40; Max Frankel, “The Murder Broadcasting System,”
New York Times Magazine,
17 December 1995, pp. 46—47; Franklin Gilliam, Shanto Iyengar et al., “Crime in Black and White,” working paper, Center for American Politics and Public Policy, UCLA, September 1995; Stephen Budiansky et al., “Local TV: Mayhem Central,”
U
.
S
.
News & World Report,
4 March 1996, p. 63; Steven Stark, “Local News: The Biggest Scandal on TV,”
Washington Monthly
(June 1997): 38-41. Some evidence suggests that the amount of coverage declined in the late 1990s: Alan Finder, “Something New in News: Drop in Crime Reporting Follows the Drop in the Crime Rate,”
New York Times,
6 September 1998, p. A23.

16
Judy Klemesrud, “Those Treats May Be Tricks,”
New York Times,
28 October 1970, p. 56.

17
“The Goblins Will Getcha,”
Newsweek,
3 November 1975, p. 28.

18
Abby, quoted in Jan Harold Brunvand, “The Halloween Saboteurs,” column syndicated by United Feature Syndicate, October 1991. Polls cited in Joel Best,
Threatened Children
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 132.

19
Brunvand, “Halloween Saboteurs.”

20
Best,
Threatened Children;
Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi, “The Blade in the Apple,”
SocialProblems
32 (June 1985): 488-99; and private correspondence with Best.

21
Bill Ellis, “New Halloween Traditions in Response to Sadism Legends,” in Jack Santino, ed.,
Halloween and Other Festivals ofDeathand Life
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), pp. 24-44 (quote on p. 27). Ellis and Best interpret the Halloween sadism stories as an “urban legend.” While I do not disagree with that categorization, my concern here is with the specific fears that the news stories promoted and dodged.

22
Klemesrud, “Those Treats May Be Tricks.”

23
See, e.g., Ted Thackrey, “Trick or Treat Subdued Amid Poisoning Scares,” Los
Angeles Times,
1 November 1982, pp. 1, 28; James Barron, “Poison Worries Lead to Precautions for Halloween,”
New York Times,
28 October 1982, pp. B1, 4.

24
Best,
Threatened Children
(NBC quote on p. 98); Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence
(New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 39-44 (Goodman quote on p. 42); Lawrence Stanley, “The Child Porn Myth,”
Cardozo LawJournal
7 (1989): 313-15. For historical accounts of panics over child molesters see Joel Best,
Images of Issues
(New York: Aldine, 1989); Henry Jenkins,
Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

25
Hiroshi Fukurai et al., “Sociologists in Action: The McMartin Sexual Abuse Case, Litigation, Justice, and Mass Hysteria,”
American Sociologist
25 (1994): 44-71; Nathan and Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence,
p. 88 (quotes from, respectively, those two sources); David Shaw, “Reporter’s Early Exclusives Triggered a Media Frenzy,”
Los Angeles Times,
20 January 1990, p. A1.

26
Nathan and Snedeker,
Satan’s Silence;
survey cited in Fukurai et al., “Sociologists in Action.”

27
Lizette Alvarez, “House Passes Bill to Confront Pedophiles Who Use Internet,”
New York Times,
12 June 1998, p. A17.

28
Ibid.; Mark Clayton, “‘Off-Line’ Hazards Lie in Web’s Links, Lures,”
Christian Science Monitor,
8 August 1996, p. 10; ABC, “20/20,” 31 October 1997. See also Wendy Cole, “The Marquis de Cyberspace,”
Time,
3 July 1995, p. 43; NBC, “Dateline,” 16 June 1995; NBC, “Today,” 17 September 1998.

29
John Rather, “A Look at Perils the Internet Poses to Children,”
New York Times
(Long Island Edition), 12 October 1997, sec. 14, p. 1; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Undercover on the Dark Side of Cyberspace,”
Washington Post,
2 January 1996, p. D1; William Rashbaum and Helen Kennedy, “Talkin’ Dirty,”
New York Daily News,
15 September 1995, p. 6; Jon Jeter, “FBI Agents Posed as Teenagers ... ,”
Washington Post,
15 September 1995, p. A3. See also “Why Pedophiles Go On-line,”
Redbook,
April 1997, p. 102.

30
Clayton, “‘Off-Line’ Hazards”; Rather, “Perils the Internet Poses”; ABC, “20/20,” 31 October 1997; Cori Anne Natoli, “FBI Knew of Manzie’s Cry for Help,”
Asbury Park Press,
5 April 1998, p. A1. See also Joan Feldman, “Computer Detectives Uncover Smoking Guns,”
Computerworld,
9 June 1997, pp. 1, 26.

31
Quote from Chandrasekaran, “Dark Side of Cyberspace.”

32
Steven Levy, “Did the Net Kill Eddie?”
Newsweek,
13 October 1997 (contains quotes). See also Terri Somers, “Manzie’s Alleged Abuser Faults Police for Slaying,”
Asbury Park Press,
1 July 1998, p. A1; Jim Curran, “Insanity Defense Planned for Teen in Boy’s Killing,”
Bergen Record,
28 April 1998, p. A3.

33
Kim Murphy, “Youngsters Falling Prey to Seducers in Computer Web Crime,”
Los Angeles Times,
11 June 1995, p. A1. See also National Public Radio, “All Things Considered,” 31 August, 1993.

34
National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect,
Study Findings: National Study of the Incidence and Severity of Child Abuse and Neglect
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1988); Lisa A. Fontes, ed.,
Sexual Abuse in Nine North American Cultures
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995); Carole Jenny et al., “Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?”
Pediatrics
94 (1994): 41-44; Leslie Margolin, “Child Sexual Abuse by Uncles,”
Child Abuse and Neglect
18 (1994): 215-24; Murray A. Straus and Richard Gelles,
Physical Violence in American Families
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990).

35
John Dreese, “The Other Victims of Priest Pedophilia,”
Commonweal
121 (22 April 1994): 11-15.

36
Andrew M. Greeley,
Fall from
Grace (New York: Putnam, 1993); idem, “Priestly Silence on Pedophilia,”
New York Times,
13 March 1992, p. A31; idem, “How Serious Is the Problem of Sexual Abuse by Clergy?”
America
168 (20 March 1993): 6-11.

37
James L. Franklin, “Priest Puts Number of Abused at 100,000,”
Boston Globe,
19 March 1993, p. 14; Philip Murnion et al., “Regarding A. Greeley’s Data on Sexual Abuse by Priests,”
America
168 (17 April 1993): 21—22. On methodology issues see also Dennis Howitt,
Pedophilesand Sexual Offenses Against Children
(New York: Wiley, 1995); Richard Parker and John Gagnon,
Conceiving Sexuality
(New York: Routledge, 1995); Edward O. Laumann et al.,
The Social Organization of Sexuality
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Rick Zimmerman and Lilly Langer, “Improving Estimates of Prevalence of Sensitive Behaviors,
”Journal of Sex Research
32 (1995): 107-17. For a more detailed analysis of these issues see Philip Jenkins,
Pedophiles and
Priests (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

38
Christopher B. Daly, “Sexual Abuse Cases Take Their Toll on Catholic Dioceses,”
Washington Post,
1 November 1994, p. A3; Jenkins,
Pedophiles and Priests.

39
Walter Russell Mead, “A Crisis of Faith Bedevils Roman Catholic Church,”
Los Angeles Times,
12 December 1993, p. M1.

40
Daniel Pedersen, “Death in Dunblane,”
Newsweek,
25 March 1996, pp. 25—29 (quote on p. 25); Hugo Young, “The Myth That America Is Unique,”
Newsweek,
25 March 1996, p. 29.

41
One reason Catholic clergy (rather than, say, Baptist or Methodist clergy) are targets for accusations about pedophilia is, paradoxically, their unmarried status. See Jenkins,
Pedophilesand Priests,
pp. 9, 50—51. Reuters quote from Maggie Fox, “Dunblane ‘Pervert’ Who Struck Back at Whispers,” Reuters, 17 March 1996.

42
Fox, “Dunblane ‘Pervert’.” For an example of the coverage see Louis J. Salome, “Killer of 17 Liked Boys, Guns,”
Austin American—Statesman,
15 March 1996, p. A1. On myths and realities about molesters: Jenny et al., “Are Children at Risk”; Best,
Threatened Children;
National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect,
Study Findings;
Pauline Bart and Eileen Moran, eds.,
Violence Against Women
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993).

43
Bill Hewitt et al., “Innocents Lost,”
People,
1 April 1996, pp. 42-49 (quotes from pp. 48, 49). Hamilton’s letter is quoted in several news accounts cited.

44
Pedersen, “Death in Dunblane” (quote in sidebar).

45
Philip Jenkins,
Using Murder
(New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1994), pp. 183-87.

46
Jenny et al., “Are Children at Risk”; Bettina Boxall, “Statistics and Science Can Be Twisted to Suit Debate,”
Los Angeles Times,
12 November 1993, p. A18; Nicholas Groth,
Men Who Rape
(New York: Plenum, 1979). The pedophile-homosexual connection is made in coverage of pedophile priests as well: see Jenkins,
Pedophiles and Priests,
ch. 6. Sheldon quote from “C.C. Watch,” Electronic News Service, April 1996.

47
Lance Morrow, “The Unconscious Hums, ‘Destroy!’”
Time,
25 March 1996, p. 78.

48
Hewitt et al., “Innocents Lost”; Associated Press, “Scottish Killer Ran Boys’ Groups ... ,”
Chicago Tribune,
15 March 1996, p. 6.

49
Newsweek
quote from Pedersen, “Death in Dunblane,” p. 25;
People
quote from Hewitt et al., “Innocents Lost.”

50
“What Is Sporting About Such Guns?”
Daily Mail,
18 March 1996, p. 8.

51
On the news media’s irresponsibility regarding guns see Thomas Winship, “Step Up the War Against Guns,”
Editor and Publisher,
24 April 1993, p. 24. Quote from Young, “Myth That America Is Unique,” p. 29.

52
Daniel Schorr, “TV Violence,”
Christian Science Monitor,
7 September 1993, p.19. That media violence is often cited as a cause for serial murder see Jenkins,
Using Murder,
p. 125.

53
Patrick Cooke, “TV Causes Violence?”
New York Times,
14 August 1993, p. 11 (contains quote).

54
The UCLA study, released in report form in September 1995, was directed by Jeffrey Cole, Center for Communication Policy, UCLA. On the advantages of painful portrayals of violence see also Robert Scheer, “Violence Is Us,”
Nation,
15 November 1993, p. 555.