In the fourth and final chunk of "The Culture of Fear", Glassner discusses the use of metaphoric illnesses, which people use to attribute the causes of the disease according to their personal beliefs or gain. Such metaphornic illnesses that are found in soceity are Gulf War Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and breast implants. As to produce fear among the pulblics, reporters dismiss, if not, pay little attention to the reasearch, statistics, and analysis conducted by scientists that prove otherwise such as breat implants which studies found no evidence that implants had caused diseases in women who used them, and chose to go in favor of anecdotes of the victims.Glassner also discusses the fear produced by the media on plane crashes which statistics say are 1 in 4 million and reporters choose to connect scattered, random events to give false and misleading information which leads to the decrease in business. So what makes an airplane crash so interesting? According to Gareth Cook,"When a plane falls from the sky, the story is compelling, albeit morbidly so: the pictures of twisted metal, luggage hanging from trees, the screaming mother at the airport where the flight never arrives."
Questions
1. What are some types of metaphoric illnesses we see nowadays portrayed in the media?
2.How much of the media can we trust and believe to be truthful when after reading Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear", all it seems to do is promote fear?
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Truthfully speaking, I don't think we can rely upon the media completely because all it does is promote fear into the public. We can't trust the media and we can't believe everything the media presents to us. We should be able to make our own judgment and rely on other sources of information to get accurate news.
ReplyDeleteHonestly after reading this book I can never watch the news and feel the same way again. Obviously it is not to be trusted but if you want to know what the weather is like i guess that's pretty reliable. And yes, most of it is promoting fear but what this book has helped me to realize is that it's all for the sake of an entertaining story so it isn't always a real threat.
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