“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” – Franklin Roosevelt
Introduction
The fear in American lives and the role popular culture and media play in shaping it has become an area of interest for many (Altheide). American news media has successfully helped to produce the fear discourse in the mind of its viewers. Television news presents social or political issues or problems that are produced by entertainment media. Thus, it is the “mass media in general, and especially the electronic news media, are part of a “problem-generating machine” geared to entertainment, voyeurism, and the “quick fix” (Altheide, “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear” media is disseminating fear through all its communication formats and the victims of it all are the viewers. And research shows that a specific theme that transcends from media is fear (Altheide, “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear”). On a clearer note, it can be said that fear is omnipresent in American people and it gets accentuated through interactions with media broadcasted stories.
As news reports have become a prominent feature of the popular culture, it has successfully intertwined with the everyday life of viewers, political speeches, and other entertainment forms such as movies. It is believed that news is being used to spread fear to offer news that entertains and endorses distrust among the audience. Thus, the part of entertaining news is to shape the content of news and use fear to spread over social issues especially when fear is a prevailing framework in the society.
Fox News has seen a record-breaking increase in view ship by 430 percent growth in the first three years of their operations, in the demographics of 25 to 54 years (Sella). But the channel has been gained prominence with its eating up the share of the rivals (CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.) and mostly provides biased news (Raspberry). For it was reported that Fox News aired a false report on Barak Obama which stated that he was educated in a madrassa (an Islamic school). As quoted in an article by E. J. Dionne Jr., “The first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father as a Muslim and was educated in a madrassa…Financed by Saudis, they teach this Wahhabism, which pretty much hates us. The big question is, was that on the curriculum back then?” (Dionne Jr.) which was later proven by CNN to be a complete fabrication. A Neil Cavuto showcasing Your World mentioned the Auto company bailout that
“… [US] billions of dollars in subsidies to the arms we support. Wall Street billions of dollars for that they knew what balked at helping working people who work every day and actually produce something in this country it is unfair it’s not right and it is equal. I tell you these people are worth that they work hard and — worthy of this investment it is a low unlike the billions to Wall Street it is alone the Chrysler loan was paid back end this long will be paid back it will pay huge dividends for this country.” (Cavuto)
In this news, Cavuto paints a gloomy picture about the economy and the picture that the auto giants asking for a bailout will not be able to repay the loans and will create a bad picture of the economy. This paints the fear of an industrial failure in the minds of the viewers who are already expecting a recession of the worst kind in the US.
Clearly, Fox News has become an epitome of news that is probably just half true and is clearly able to induce fear in public. These messages induce fear in the American public even when they are not needed to show how American fear formulated through media reflects “pervasive and often unfocused anxieties about their environment in a particular history” (Altheide, Creating Fear, p. 2).
In the proposed paper I intend to present the prevailing fear in American society and which has been produced by news media and the rise of a “problem frame” which is used to delineate this fear. This paper tries to demonstrate how this concept of painting a “problem frame” is used to disseminate fear in news production. For this, we will consider previous researches on media’s construction of fear and primary material of the news transcriptions for a certain timeline for three shows on Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Special Report with Brit Hume, and The O’Reilly Factor with Bill O’Reilly.
Literature Review
It has been agreed by researchers that fear induced by entertaining news has two forms: (a) news generates a large number of images and content pertaining to fear, including crime and violence, and (b) American audiences believe that social life is dangerous.
Researches on a showcase of violence in media suggest that violent content can lead viewers to perceive everyday life as dangerous and fearful (Altheide, “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear”). Research on crime in mass media has noted, “Because the media often distort crime by over-representing more severe, intentional, and gruesome incidents, the public overestimates its frequency and often misperceives reality.” (Heath and Gilbert, p. 371) Americans are fearful of many terms such as diseases, nutrition, medical care, terrorism, unemployment, recession, accidents, and life expectancy. Many public opinion polls show that Americans are a fearful society (Altheide, Creating Fear).
Researchers have focused on energy, inflation, and unemployment problems in the US and have shown that TV is a most powerful source of providing accessible information that viewers refer to while interpreting an event. Thus, viewers frame the problem in accordance to the news provided to them through television media and how they will construct it along with the influence of social life: “By priming certain aspects of national life while ignoring others, television news sets the terms by which political judgments are rendered and political choices made” (Iyengar and Kinder 4) Iyengar (1991) in a separate work suggests that stressing and framing of news reports as either “episodic” which focus on individual situations and responsibilities or “thematic” which shows responsibility in regards to the context and society manipulates viewers’ perception of news reports in TV.
Many researchers have used the “problem frame” to satisfy the nature of news to provide entertainment to its audience. The real idea behind this is to make an everyday problem seem interesting to the audience. The news media has successfully generated a frame that aids in generating fear in audiences (Altheide, “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear”). The problem frame is a secular alternative to the morality play. Its characteristics include narrative structure, universal moral meanings, specific time and place, and an unambiguous focus on the disorder that is culturally resonant.
An examination into the impact of audiences’ perceptions of crime on their beliefs and ideas showed that “fear of crime” distinguishes between perceiving a “risk” and being “fearful”: “Fear is only one of several reactions to judgments of potentially high risk in a situation. Others may include constrained behavior, community or political activism, compensatory defensive actions, and avoidance behaviors including relocation. Perceived risk and the possible reactions to it are viewed as always being developed in an environmental context replete with socially constructed meanings” (Ferraro 12). Ferrero argues that people take precaution against things that are perceived to be risky but not necessarily “feared”. This argument is used by news agencies to suggest that they are trying to show what is risky to the public and not necessarily disseminating “fear”.
Another construct of fear that has gained prominence is victimization (Altheide, “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear”). But the interesting fact is that it is not only done in case of crimes, but also through political discourse and recently through presidential elections events or recessionary position of America. Here the process has stressed on creation of “others” by creating membership in a group wherein it defines people as outsiders. This is a social process that makes the dominant group the writer of the existence of the inferior group (Schwalbe, Godwin, and Holden).
Currently, a popular discourse of fear in the American news media has been crime and terrorism (Altheide, Creating Fear). These are artfully produced in the media during the 9/11 debacle and infused fear among the American audience (Altheide, Notes Towards A Politics Of Fear).
Different formats shape what is to be presented in mass content Formats and frames shape mass media content (Couch). These media formats provide a definition regarding the communication to the audience. Previous studies on media forms have suggested that forms and formats are complementary and are represented through how this news is popularly packaged so that it can be delivered to the audience. Thus, while reporting an incidence of crime it is important to understand how the content will be framed so as to induce fear in the audience thus how it can be packaged and presented to the audience so that they may interpret it in a variety of ways (Altheide, Creating Fear).
On discussion, the “problem frame” as discussed by Athdeide in figures 1 shows that it is a process of broadcasting the incidence through the use of mass media and the perception it creates to the public is the “problem frame”.
Figure 1 shows how the real incidents are turned into “non-problems, problems, and solutions” (Altheide, “The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear” 657). The figure demonstrates the experience frame that is mediated through complex technology through television. This new technology has risen the “mass audiences, mass marketing techniques, and application and refinement of the entertainment formats for sitcoms and news alike, the problem frame has been developed and refined” (657). The diagram suggests that the problem is regularly applied to different incidents which are claimed to be “problems” by the news media. As has been suggested through the example of the news in Fox News about Obama being taught in a madrassa suggests that the audience will interpret the message in different lights given an existing fear of Muslim terrorism as a threat to America after 9/11. This news piece is expected to create a “total stock of knowledge” about the false report and will be helpful in the creation of “problem frames”.
Methodology
The main aim of this study is to investigate the creation of fear through news deliverance. The media creates the “problem frame” by twisting facts and delivering the news from a different point of view by increasing its entertainment value. I hereby argue that certain Fox News Channel shows cause fear by criticizing certain things and altering the news. Gossip has now become one of the top interests of the press (Eco). The way newscasters combine their perspective and the actual news together, the opinion of the audience is formed due to what they have learned from what they are watching (Kuzyk, McCluskey, and Ross). These strategies are used to cause fear and concern and are left wanting more information. Hence, I would like to investigate the dissemination of fear among viewers of a few Fox News shows which is created due to the distortion of the facts that the channel shows.
The main sources that are used to study the media presentations are transcripts from the Fox News Channel’s official website along with the manuscript from the shows of Bill O’Reilly, Brit Hume, and Neil Cavuto. We will cover the shows dated from November 4, 2008, to November 17, 2008. Other than these, we will use Library databases from the University of Tennessee website will provide me with additional sources.
The analysis of the problem is done through the process of “tracking discourse” (Altheide, Notes Towards A Politics Of Fear). Our study is mainly a qualitative analysis of the primary documents as mentioned above and aims to analyze a number of documents, which will enable us to become familiar with formats and emphases, and by which we can suggest topics and themes. First, we will code news of fear and related topics and then try to analyze the changes in coverage and how they are accentuating or decreasing this notion of “fear”. Thus, we will try to find the news topics which are used to deliver “fear messages” use the latent and emergent approach as had been done by Altheide in producing a “problem frame” along with comparing the thematic emphases in the news content.
Conclusion
News is a creator of incidents in its own light. With the emergence of the entertainment value of news and their growing view ship, Fox News has taken the strategy of deliberately framing news, reporting gossips, distorting facts, and delivering “fear” to the audience. Research has shown that Americans are more fearful than others are and the element of fear has increased over time. Using this “fear” element, News channels are resorting to present facts, which induce a greater amount of fear and presents the issue as a magnified problem. This study aims to investigate how this fear is framed through a few shows aired on Fox news. Here we consider a particular time frame when we analyze the news aired through the channel.
This study will help to understand how news channels have successfully commercialized reality and how they are using their power to reach millions to manipulate their perceptions and make them even more “fearful” of simple incidents.
Bibliography
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