The Culture of Fear -- chunk 1( ch 1-2)

Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear" argues how the United states is scared of all the wrong things and ignoring the real things they should be scared of. Glassner states the studies done by various sources on road rage and on other crimes portrayed on tv. He then goes on and finds facts that prove them wrong and show how the media exagerates statistics just to get viewers. He also states how people ignore the real problems because they are unsure how to fix them. So instead doing something about them, they just ignore them and blow a different problem out of proportion. Making a problem seem bigger than it is "represents opportunities to avoid problems [they] do not want to confront". His purpose is to prove how we are scared of the wrong things in order to make us aware of the real problems.
Vocabulary: none
Tone: Informative, Aggressive, Sarcastic
Questions: What do you think is the most exagerated fear in America?
Why do you think the media prefers to blow a statistic out of proportion rather than to give the real facts and inform the people of what they should really worry about?