What Media Potrays

Watch enough brutality on TV and you come to believe you are living in a cruel and gloomy world in which you feel vulnerable and insecure. In his research over three decades Gerbner found that people who watch a lot of TV are more likely than others to believe their neighborhoods are unsafe, to assume that crime rates are rising, and to overestimate their own odds of becoming a victim. They also buy more locks, alarms, and- you guessed it- guns, in hopes of protecting themselves. 'They may accept and even welcome,' Gerbner reports, 'repressive measures such as more jails, capital punishment, harsher sentences- measures that have never reduced crime but never fail to get votes- if that promises to relieve their anxieties. That is the deeper dilemma of violence-laden television.'"

In the exert from the book The Culture of Fear, author Barry Glassner compares the fear spread by media to how it affects us in how we live our everyday lives. Media portraying the dark side of communities around us make us question our safety and our will to walk around without having a constant reminder in the back of our mind bringing up all the stories we have heard and watched on television. Similar to carrying a weight on your back, this constant thought of fear drags us down, rethinking our security. Not only does this mentally corrupt us, but also financially. Those who are contaminated with the over violent scenes which are spread throughout the news, influence the need for reassurance. Media through television is a powerful thing; causing people to be more than willing to spend everything they have on guns, locks, alarm systems, and etc.… Gordimer's short story, “Once Upon a Time” represents ironic ways how people are willing to go out on a limb for security systems in  time of feeling unsafe in there own home, which eventually bites them in the end.