Chapter 2 is titled Crime in The News: Tall Tales and Overstated Statistics. The chapter jumps around to a few different topics but stays with the general theme that journalist and news media use incidents, and I will explain some examples from the book, to address the issues they are afraid to take head-on and these issues help explain how the public has gotten mixed up with so many problems today.
To start Glassner gives us the example of a war vet named Anthony Riggs who was shot and killed in what was assumed an act of grand theft auto. The media jumped all over the story without really analyzing what happened and why. This is all important because the story released by the media was full of false information, some of which they could have fixed if they had been a little more skeptical of the story. Glassner goes on to quote Shelby Coffey, head of ABC News and a former editor of the Los Angeles Times when he referred to "average journalist" (pg 25). She makes an analogy between a journalist skepticism and a knights suit of armor. After this Glassner follows up with the lines, "Yet when it comes to a great crime story, a journalist will behave like the high school nerd who has been approached by the most popular girl in school for help with her science project. Grateful for the opportunity, he doesn't bother to ask a lot of questions."(pg 25) This simply means that the media isn't always concerned with facts or prove if the stories good they roll with it. After this Glassner switches to how the media will focus on big problems through non-existent ones. The example is workplace violence being used as a way to confront and talk about corporate layoffs. Corporate layoffs being a touchy subject reporters wouldn't face the issue head-on and instead made up a false fear to in a roundabout way bring up the topic. A second example is used to convey the same point, this time it being Halloween fear mongering and the reluctance to face that the fact that "far more children are seriously injured and killed by family members than by strangers." (31) Following this, we get a slightly visual example that I will go over briefly. This example is about cyber predators and pedophiles. It basically has the same purpose as the rest of the examples as in the media blames individuals and uses the small incidents to peek at topics that are difficult to approach. Now I've typed a little much so all some the rest of the chapter up like this; Glassner gives us more examples that allude to, "the endless cache of stories about villains and victims, stories in which real people in their real complexity and the real dangers they and the larger society face can be glimpsed only in the shadows."(pg 49)
Article Analysis-
Might be a tad short due to my lack of pre-planning.
Okay to start the article was picked by our teacher and it comes from the Capital-Journal Editorial Board and specifically relates to violent crime in Kansas. The title is Editorial: Violent Crime and Common Sense, which instantly remind me of the Culture of Fear. The Article gives us some basic statistics on national crime rates that come from the FBI; which state, " the rate of violent crime in our country fell by around 50 percent between 1993 and 2015." This is something that Glassner has stated throughout the book so far. The Article then goes on to state, "majorities of Americans consistently report that violence is actually increasing" which happens because of misleading media and over exaggerated statistics which I'm hoping these are not. They then bring in another study done by the FBI that is a little more recent and relevant, "Between 2014 and 2015, the FBI reported a 3 percent rise in overall violent crime and a 10 percent spike in the murder rate. These numbers continued to climb from 2015 to 2016." These statistics are also true for Kansas seeing how it has seen the "murder rate surged by 46.5 percent between 2014 and 2016, and there were more murders last year than at any point since 2000. Meanwhile, the overall violent crime rate increased by 15.6 percent." According to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. The majority of the rest of the article focus on the KBI and how it's lack of resources make it impossible for it to keep up with the increase in violent crimes. At the end of the article, they state, "Although we shouldn’t indulge statistically illiterate hysteria ..... nor should we ignore the serious increase in violent crime that Kansas has witnessed since 2014." This relates to the chapter because Glassner brings up topics about how crime is still a problem but we focus on it to much in sections or small fragments than as one big over all problem. We can not ignore the problem if we intend to fix it ;America has no intention of fixing the majority of its problems.
Article Analysis-
Might be a tad short due to my lack of pre-planning.
Okay to start the article was picked by our teacher and it comes from the Capital-Journal Editorial Board and specifically relates to violent crime in Kansas. The title is Editorial: Violent Crime and Common Sense, which instantly remind me of the Culture of Fear. The Article gives us some basic statistics on national crime rates that come from the FBI; which state, " the rate of violent crime in our country fell by around 50 percent between 1993 and 2015." This is something that Glassner has stated throughout the book so far. The Article then goes on to state, "majorities of Americans consistently report that violence is actually increasing" which happens because of misleading media and over exaggerated statistics which I'm hoping these are not. They then bring in another study done by the FBI that is a little more recent and relevant, "Between 2014 and 2015, the FBI reported a 3 percent rise in overall violent crime and a 10 percent spike in the murder rate. These numbers continued to climb from 2015 to 2016." These statistics are also true for Kansas seeing how it has seen the "murder rate surged by 46.5 percent between 2014 and 2016, and there were more murders last year than at any point since 2000. Meanwhile, the overall violent crime rate increased by 15.6 percent." According to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. The majority of the rest of the article focus on the KBI and how it's lack of resources make it impossible for it to keep up with the increase in violent crimes. At the end of the article, they state, "Although we shouldn’t indulge statistically illiterate hysteria ..... nor should we ignore the serious increase in violent crime that Kansas has witnessed since 2014." This relates to the chapter because Glassner brings up topics about how crime is still a problem but we focus on it to much in sections or small fragments than as one big over all problem. We can not ignore the problem if we intend to fix it ;America has no intention of fixing the majority of its problems.
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