How mass media undermines ontological security through fear-based reporting

Mass Media and Ontological Security

"Despite the fact that crime rates in most U.S. cities have been in steady decline for a decade, local newscasts still operate under the mantra, 'If it bleeds, it leads'." Gross, et al., 2003, p. 411.

Does the mass media threaten society's sense of ontological security more than it contributes to society's ontological security? This paper delves into and analyzes this question from the perspective of peer-reviewed, scholarly articles. From the literature available it is clear to an objective observer that indeed today's mass media presents constant and disturbing images, beyond what the community's actual social dynamics present as far as danger to individuals. And hence, the ontological security of millions of citizens is both threatened and disturbed.

Introduction

Ontological security: a stable, steady, consistent personal emotional state that results from a sense of comfort and continuity regarding the events on one's daily life. When people have confidence and trust in the world around them -- and generally enjoy life without fear or emotional conflict -- they are said to have ontological security.

Besides the need and strong desire for physical security, individuals have been seeking ontological security for generations. However, in the 21st Century ontological security is harder to achieve than ever before because of the constant bombardment of bad -- even frightening -- news delivered by television, newspapers, radio, the Internet and magazines, in particular television cable news. How does one find ontological security when the drumbeat of negative, scary news is constant?

According to professor Jennifer Mitzen at Ohio State University, ontological security is achieved by "routinizing relationships" with family, friends, associates and significant others (Mitzen, 2005, p. 1). But it goes much deeper and farther than just getting into a comfortable routine around one's community of friends. Ontological security in fact is a very difficult task for any person who observes televised news programs on a frequent basis, hoping to stay abreast of the world's shifting, surprising and dangerous events.

Promotion of Fear by TV Media

Do television news department seek to increase their viewer ship by using stories that cause viewers to be fearful? Jason R. Young writes in the journal American Behavioral Scientist that research shows TV news directors use "fearful news" to attract a wider audience; this is not a great revelation because any lay person who objectively observes the TV news programs night after night can see the heavy coverage of crime and violence; one can only assume that ratings are more important to most TV news outlets (Young, 2003, p. 1675). However, empirical research conducted by communications specialists and presented by Young, a social psychologist, shows that while vivid images on TV are "intensely negative" (prompting the view to be fearful) "viewers continue to be captivated by these images" (p. 1675). And if viewers are truly captivated, and the TV programmers know this, the policy logically will be to give the viewers what they want and need to keep them "captivated."

The perceptions that people have of how much crime there really is in any given community are "distorted," Young writes (p. 1675). The viewers' perception is distorted because of "…the high percentage of media coverage dedicated to crime, especially violent crime" juxtaposed with the actual "per capita rates of criminal activity" which is far lower than most TV viewers would believe, Young continues (p. 1675). To verify his assumptions Young launched a research project using thirty-six undergraduates from Hunter College in New York; it was thoughtfully created in the psychology department of the college. The participants viewed 23 TV teasers that had been gleaned from local news programs in New York City. The participants were only told that they were evaluating the teasers, since news teasers play an important role in drawing viewers for the nightly news.

The participants all had English as a first language; they ranged in age from 18 to 47; 8 were male and 28 were female; on average participants reported that they watch "some form on TV news" about 4 days per week. A carefully prepared strategy was employed: after viewing the 4-minute videotape (containing 10 teasers) the participants were asked to "…imagine being a news editor 'responsible for deciding what teasers will be aired to get people to watch tonight's evening news broadcast'" (Young, 2003, p. 1678). The results showed that "…generally, a pattern emerged suggesting that fear was, indeed, associated with perceptions of greater issue importance," Young reports (p. 1687). And "one clear conclusion" emerged when all the research was organized and finalized: "…increased unpleasantness and feat beget increased attention, as well as an increased perception of importance," Young explains (p. 1690).

Four years before September 11, 2001 -- and ten years before his article presented earlier in this paper -- professor David L. Altheide of Arizona State University wrote that "According to numerous public opinion polls, American society is a very fearful society -- some believe 'the most anxious, frightened society in history" (Altheide, 1997, p. 649). Altheide based that assertion on his own research plus the poll he referenced (in the Los Angeles Times on September 11, 1994) that showed 78% of Americans believe "…they are subjected to more risk today than their parents were twenty years ago" (p. 649). A large source that led to this perception by Americans "…is crime news coverage," Altheide explains.

Interestingly, in that same poll those interviewed said their fearful attitudes toward crime are "based 65% on what they read and see in the media and 21% on experience," Altheide continues (p. 649). It seems at this date perhaps a bit conspiratorial (and even paranoid) on the part of Barry Gunter, mass communications professor at Leicester University, to have claimed that TV news is full of violence and crime in order to keep people indoors. But the professor is quoted saying that "Greater fear of potential danger in the social environment may encourage people to stay indoors, where they watch more television, and are exposed to programmes which tell them things which in turn reinforce their anxieties" (Altheide, 1997, p. 650).

Altheide brings in the fact that TV news is really as much about entertainment as it is "news" -- and so, like any story-telling task, TV news asks the question, "How can we make real problems seem interesting?" (p. 653). One often-used strategy is to provide "new information" to get the viewer more interested in the report; for example, a talking head on TV will say something like "Here's what's happening now…" and will transition into "…another killing in the valley today" (Altheide, 1997, p. 653).

An article by Dennis T. Lowry and associates criticizes television news programming; Lowry uses verifiable crime statistics compared with the number of crime stories shown on TV and dramatically shows through his narrative that TV is using crime stories to instill fear, either purposefully or inadvertently. Lowry reports that in March of 1992, 5% of those U.S. citizens polled said crime was "the most important problem" (MIP) in the country (Lowry, 2003, p. 61). However, by August 1994 that 5% had amazingly jumped to 52% of those polled. It turned out that the television news programs accounted for "almost four times more variance in public perceptions of crime as the MIP than did actual crime rates, Lowry explained (p. 61).

Meantime, was there a huge increase in the "actual number of crimes" between 1992 and 1994? Lowry asks. Looking at the FBI Uniform Crime Reports for the U.S. 1997 shows Lowry that the answer is "no" there was no huge increase in crime in that 2-year period. The author dug deeper and discovered that during the 1990s, crime stories were produced more often than any other theme by ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts (p. 62). When many if not a majority of citizens watch evening news and the news consistently and dramatically portrays crime as much more serious than it really is statistically, ontological security is going to be hard to obtain.

Crime stories are of great interest to viewers, Lowry admits, and crime stories have a beginning, middle, and an end, so they are easy to report. However, "news value" (i.e., what keeps people tuned to that particular channel) does not signal news importance albeit "criminals are always interesting to the ordinary man," Lowry continues. Crime "runs rampant in the American press," Lowry quotes from Lotz (1991) on page 63, but even though there may not have been as many reported crimes as the media suggests, "newspapers need to fill their news holes." Lowry researched the amount of time that the three major networks in 1991 -- compared with what they covered in 1994 -- had given to crime stories; the networks' evening news crime coverage in 1991 was "an aggregate of 956 minutes" but by 1994 the time showing crime stories on the major networks' evening news jumped to 2,058 minutes.

And not surprisingly, Lowry's research shows a "…positive relationship between newspaper coverage of violent crimes and people's perceptions of the amount of violent crime" (p. 64). When people perceive there is more violent crime than there really is, it is a situation in which they will certainly have problems achieving ontological security.

Ronald Weitzer and Charis Kubrin begin their scholarly piece in Justice Quarterly by repeating a theme used often in this paper: "…heavy consumption of media messages distorts audience beliefs about the world and influences cognitive and emotional states" (Weitzer, 2004, p. 499). The authors take the argument against TV news a bit deeper; they point out on page 499 that although the media "disproportionately report on violent crime (especially murder)," the media rarely investigates crime patters and they generally ignore the causes of crime. It would seem to be responsible journalism to not only report crimes (even in excess of what crime there is in the real world) but to examine the roots that lead to crime and the social conditions that may contribute to crime, Weitzer concludes.

But of course to do that would take time for TV news reporters, and they are apparently too busy sensationalizing crime and making a big splash on their news programs. Moreover, many "journalists" are actually just attractive men and women newsreaders; someone else goes out and takes video and the new readers present it on air as though they had done the gathering of the news. In the process of presenting an out-of-proportion amount of crime the TV news programs "…cultivate a perception that the world is a scary place," Weitzer continues. Indeed, repeated exposure to media coverage of crime "…may thus generate fear and insecurity among viewers" -- which comes right back to the thesis of this paper, that media create fear and thus reduce the possibility of citizens enjoying ontological security (Weitzer, 2004, p. 499).

Conclusion

Many people around the world are searching for ontological security, Catarina Kinnvall writes in the journal Political Psychology (Kinnvall, 2004, p. 741), but the globalization of economics, politics, and human affairs have made citizens "more ontologically insecure." How is that true? For many people, the life they have led is being "contested and changed at the same time" because in order to escape economic and political hardships in search of "a better life" they seek opportunities in Western societies only to find "borders close to immigrants" (Kinnvall, 2004, p. 741). Kinnvall offers many examples of why globalization has become a destabilizing force, too many to list here, but in short the author writes that because the world is increasingly perceived as a smaller place, tragic or violent events thousands of miles away -- shown worldwide on TV -- have "consequences for out everyday political, social, and economic lives" and that dynamic "affects individuals' sense of being" (p. 742). Clearly there are many instances that show alert citizens how the media is negatively effecting ontological security; but perhaps the best possible solution for those who truly want to achieve a stable mental state is to simply turn off the TV news and take the children out for a walk in the natural world.