Donald Trump, Viewer in Chief
If George Gerbner were alive today, he would probably be both fascinated and appalled by President Donald Trump. Gerbner, a professor and researcher and later dean at the University of Pennsylvania, developed a theory called “mean world syndrome,” in which he posited that people who watch an abundance of television see the world as a dangerous place.
More specifically, Gerbner’s groundbreaking research found that people who watch seven hours of TV or more per day:
• think their own street is unsafe at night.
• are afraid of strangers and of meeting new people.
• overestimate their chances of becoming involved in a violent crime.
Heavy TV users also tend to be more supportive of capital punishment, three-strikes sentences, and other tough-on-crime measures. One has to wonder if the rush to lock up criminals in the late 1980s and early 1990s at least partly came about because Congress and certain constituencies were simply watching too much TV. Gerbner certainly thought so. “This has enormous political fallout,” he wrote in 1994. “It’s impossible to run an election campaign without advocating more jails, harsher punishment, more executions, all the things that have never worked to reduce crime but have always worked to get votes. It’s driven largely, although not exclusively, by television-cultivated insecurity.”
Now comes Donald Trump, with his devotion to TV, especially programs that dwell on the dangers of violence, terrorism, illegal immigration and inner-city crime. Are these problems as bad as he says they are, or is he just watching too much TV?
Evidently, he fits Gerbner’s first criterion for mean world syndrome — he watches a lot of television. “Most mornings, Trump flicks on the TV and watches ‘Morning Joe,’ often for long periods of time, sometimes interrupted with texts to the hosts or panelists,” authors Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei reported Jan. 24 on the online news site Axios. “After the 6 a.m. hour of ‘Joe,’ he’s often on to ‘Fox & Friends’ by 7 a.m., with a little CNN before or after. He also catches the Sunday shows, especially ‘Meet the Press.’ ‘The shows,’ as he calls them, often provoke his tweets. The day of our interview with him, all of his tweet topics were discussed during the first two hours of ‘Morning Joe.’ ”
The New York Times reported on Jan. 25 that the president is also “able to end his evenings with plenty of television.” Of course, we remember Trump’s loud complaints during the campaign about Saturday Night Live, more evidence of his TV watching habits.
Trump also seems to fit Gerbner’s second criterion — he paints the world as a scary place. At the Republican National Convention last year, Trump’s acceptance speech was rife with cherry-picked data and statistics presenting the country as overrun by poverty, criminals, violence and illegal immigrants. “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: Death, destruction, terrorism and weakness,” he said. And later: “The first task for our new Administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their communities.”
Now, mix TV and the “mean world.” At a campaign rally in Florida on Feb. 18, Trump alluded to a non-existent terrorist event in Sweden that was later traced to a segment on Fox News the previous night. In that segment, Tucker Carlson had run an interview about a new film alleging violence by refugees in Sweden.
And on Jan. 24, Trump tweeted about gun violence in Chicago, shortly after Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor” aired a segment on the same subject. These are just two of the connections we’ve seen recently between Trump’s tweets and his TV fare.
Detractors and skeptics will point out that crime exists. Terrorism exists. But not in proportion to our fears, says Barry Glassner, president of Lewis and Clark College, a noted sociologist and author of the book, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. “We are living in the most fear-mongering time in human history. And the main reason for this is that there’s a lot of power and money available to individuals and organizations who can perpetuate these fears,” Glassner told Rolling Stone magazine last year. “Most Americans are living in the safest place at the safest time in human history.”
But don’t take Glassner’s word for it. Here are the odds of dying from crime and terrorism, as compiled in 2015 by TechJuice:
• Heart Disease: 1 in 5
• Cancer: 1 in 7
• Stroke: 1 in 23
• Electrocution: 1 in 5,000
• Intentional Self-harm: 1 in 9,380
• Assault: 1 in 16,421
• Murder: 1 in 18,000
• Car Accident: 1 in 18,585
• Accident at Work: 1 in 43,500
• Accidental Drowning: 1 in 79,065
• Bee, Snake Venomous Sting: 1 in 100,000
• Choking on Food: 1 in 370,035
• Lightning: 1 in 576,000
• Dog Bite: 1 in 700,000
• Alcohol Poisoning: 1 in 820,217
• Fireworks Accident: 1 in 1,000,000
• Food Poisoning: 1 in 3,000,000
• Snake Bite: 1 in 3,500,000
• Terrorist attack: 1 in 9,300,000
• Falling Coconut: 1 in 250,000,000
• Shark Attack: 1 in 300,000,000
So, dying in a terrorist attack is more likely than dying from a shark attack, or than dying by a falling coconut. But a person is 16 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by a terrorist. And a person is 3,600 times more likely to die of a heart attack than to be murdered.
Do a search of Gerbner’s name, and you might find critics who assailed his research, particularly those in the TV industry. Of course the industry would push back. It’s also understandable that TV lovers would not want to give up their favorite shows, or be too self-reflective of the consequences of their viewing habits. But people who deny the connection between violence and TV miss the point of Gerbner’s research. He wasn’t saying that TV makes us violent. He was saying that when we watch a lot of TV, we begin to believe that what we see on TV is actually the way life is, even though the show might be a fantasy series on Netflix, an old Clint Eastwood movie, or a cartoon on Comedy Central. Even the nightly news does not depict life as we know it. Who hasn’t heard the old complaint that TV doesn’t show enough of the “good news” happening around us?
As for Trump’s supporters, Gerbner would probably be interested to know how much television they watch, too.
“Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures,” Gerbner testified before Congress in 1981. “They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities. That is the deeper problem of violence-laden television.”
Of course we don’t know whether Trump really believes the world is as dangerous as he says it is, or if he’s simply using fear to press his agenda. Either way, he might consider curbing his TV appetite. As I instruct my students, turn off the TV (and your cell phone) sometimes, and get some exercise, meet new people, read a book, or try a radio station you’ve never listened to before.
If you still have to watch TV, try a history documentary or a TED Talk. Get your news from a variety of media and sources, both within your bubble and outside of it. Try watching Fox News and MSNBC. Read the American Conservative and the Atlantic. Huffington Post and the National Review. Scroll to the bottom of a story to discover if it’s news, opinion or commentary, and learn the difference between the three. Get your news from an organization’s website, rather than Facebook, to avoid the Facebook algorithm that tags you as a liberal or a conservative, Democrat or Republican, and feeds you just what it thinks you want to read. Even when you’re in your comfort zone, question your assumptions and your own worldview.
Most of all, remember that many of the dangers we see on TV are a fictional world away, even if folks in the White House want you to believe they’re on your darkened street at night.
