So it is understandable that the public should be afraid of flying, but especially because of the overwhelming amounts of coverage that each crash receives. News reporters, insurance agents, political lobbyists and other fear mongers have used several specific tactics to cause Ameri

Real social troubles will now be able to gain the attention that they need.

umbers and statistics to misdirect our beliefs about aviation safety. For example, in 1988 the Washington Post ran a title that read, "Airline Accident rate is highest in 13 Years", when in reality, the accident rate had decreased by 70 percent since the 1960's (184). Misdirection has been an excellent tool by which fear mongers have confused society and made the public concentrate on insignificant events. It is confusing that this nation with its greatly intelligent citizens would abandon the needs of real social problems and succumb to the persuasive attempts of mongers; but there is a reason why America listens.

To maintain that incorrect notion in the mind of society, fear mongers divert society's attention away from social problems that are truly significant. They do this by using "misdirection", which refers to the act of presenting misleading information or diverting ones attention away from other situations. Fear mongers use this tactic to allow people to forget about the more harmful day-to-day problems. By doing this in the case of airplane crashes, fear mongers let society believe that dying in an airplane accident is a greater threat to one's well being than other problems like automobile accidents. When people hear about one dozen stories on plane crashes and maybe one story on an automobile accident on the evening news, they will probably feel that flying in an airplane is scarier than driving in a car. According to Glassner, another way fear mongers use misdirection is by concentrating solely on the negative sides of flying. If you have not had much experience with !

However, there are many people that may argue that fear mongering is not at all the root of society's fear in aviation, but the fact that aviation truly is dangerous is what causes the fear. People may believe that fear mongers do not exaggerate or distort facts about airplane crashes, but simply correctly report on the real growing trends of accidents. Yet, if people were to look closely at all of the facts regarding aviation safety compared to the other social problems facing America today, they would find that there is absolutely no significant reason for society to fear aviation to the large extent that it does. Less than 13,000 people have died in an airplane crash in the entire history of commercial aviation (183). While, according to the National Safety Council, approximately 41,200 people have died in automobile related accidents in 1998 alone There is obviously a much greater risk in driving than flying and yet society gives much more concern to aviation accidents.!

dogs and were only shown pictures of a dog whenever it was biting other people, you would probably conclude that dogs were dangero

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Approximate Word count = 1887
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)