The Pub Hub

1. Crime rates are plunging but coverage is rising
2. Drugs use is lowering but coverage is rising
3. “Imminent disaster” over unemployment
a. Being bad off ain’t that bad
b. House, two cars, consumption patterns
4. Everyone seems to have an ailment
a. Garden State, films about insanity, Tom Cruise
5. Killer kids: one incident becomes a pandemic
a. Headlines and language, example, xiv
6. Cancer: 1/250 not 1/10, most people don’t get tested because of fear
7. Panics over teachers and clergy with young kids
a. Do job from a distance
b. Relation to AIDS scare in ‘80s
c. Male day care is gone, reaffirming “traditional” gender expectations
8. Panic results in wasted money
a. $100 billion a year on the justice system
b. In CA, more money on prison and police than higher education
c. No connecting between rising cop costs and reduction in major crimes
9. We fear the wrong things
a. Health insurance
b. Income inequality: gap between rich and poor
c. Gun control
10. Two Explanations
a. Millennial tension: McArthyism in the mid ‘50s
b. Media coverage: people believe what they see
c. Emotion over facts and people become manipulated
11. Positive cases
a. Some journalists got it right
b. Journalists are often ahead of media scholars, calling out tactics that create scares
c. Studies used wrong: 1/3 are obese…actually overweight, very different
12. Morality and scares
a. Aspestos meant to stop fires but gives cancer (removal is hazardous as well)
b. City streets and fire trucks: deaths crossing the streets
c. Child satanic abuse: women blew stories out of proportion to speak out against patriarchy
d. 1/3 women were abandoned by adult men, actually 1/10
e. And feminists are anti-family and anti-child
f. Conservative/liberal discourse: Anne Coulter/Bill O’Rielly or Michael Moore/Bill Maher
13. In sum, moral insecurities help make money
a. Horror films