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People break into people's houses at nite while they're in bed all the time. It's pretty common. It's more common than house fires, at least how it's reported in the news. It's even more common where it is just a woman alone or with young kids.
And it just kills me too...there was such an attack here 2 yrs ago. two women alone, and guy broke in with a knife. If they had had ANY plans or preparation, they could very well have survived. As it was, one was killed and one seriously injured. Both were raped. With actual planning ahead, there's a good chance they might only have been wounded or not injured at all.
When you are not prepared, the attacker has all the advantages....too many people just freeze and obey.
"If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media
News is a money making industry. One that doesn't always make the goal to report the facts accurately. Gone are the days of tuning in to be informed straightforwardly about local and national issues. In truth, watching the news can be a psychologically risky pursuit, which could undermine your mental and physical health.
Fear-based news stories prey on the anxieties we all have and then hold us hostage. ...... In previous decades, the journalistic mission was to report the news as it actually happened, with fairness, balance, and integrity. However, capitalistic motives associated with journalism have forced much of today's television news to look to the spectacular, the stirring, and the controversial as news stories. It's no longer a race to break the story first or get the facts right. Instead, it's to acquire good ratings in order to get advertisers, so that profits soar.
"News programming uses a hierarchy if it bleeds, it leads. Fear-based news programming has two aims. The first is to grab the viewer's attention. In the news media, this is called the teaser. The second aim is to persuade the viewer that the solution for reducing the identified fear will be in the news story. If a teaser asks, "What's in your tap water that YOU need to know about?" a viewer will likely tune in to get the up-to-date information to ensure safety. The success of fear-based news relies on presenting dramatic anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, promoting isolated events as trends, depicting categories of people as dangerous and replacing optimism with fatalistic thinking. News conglomerates who want to achieve this use media logic, by tweaking the rhythm, grammar, and presentation format of news stories to elicit the greatest impact. ......
The distressing fall-out from this trend is that children and adults who are exposed to media are more likely than others to (a) feel that their neighborhoods and communities are unsafe, (b) believe that crime rates are rising, (c) overestimate their odds of becoming a victim, and (d) consider the world to be a dangerous place....."
Published on June 7, 2011 by Deborah Serani, Psy.D.
If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media | Psychology Today