The Front Page: Anxiety, fear and the psychological impact of rising crime
All eyes were fixed on Auckland last week when a gunman entered a construction site and opened fire.
This incident comes after a year dominated by negative headlines about crimes committed by young people: ram-raids, smash-and-grabs and burglaries, just to name a few.
A Herald poll earlier this year found 67 per cent of respondents felt more unsafe now than they did five years ago.
Psychotherapist and co-host of The Nutters Club on Newstalk ZB, Kyle MacDonald, tellsThe Front Page podcast that once anxiety has taken hold, it can be very sticky.
“Once we’ve had these impressions of very frightening events, even if we’re not directly impacted by them, those fearful thoughts can stick really hard, because that’s actually part of what’s kept the human species wandering around the planet as long as we have.”
MacDonald explains our rapid response to fear is a survival mechanism that’s an entirely normal part of what makes us human.
Our levels of anxiety are, however, affected by the narratives we see coming from politicians and the media.
“There’s nothing more topical than crime in an election year, and fear is one of the most powerful ways to get people’s attention,” says MacDonald.
This is hilarious because the NZ Herald has been using its platform to terrify people since it began, it’s first editorial was calling on Pakeha Settlers to start war with Māori!
Ram Raid news stories make news producers orgasm.
They are cheap, easy to produce and present as live breaking news and the kids committing the crimes boasting on social media for notoriety guarantees a self feeding loop which terrifies the middle classes and sets the get tough on crime lynch mob off.
The perception is that crime is out of control, despite the evidence showing a spike, but in context, isn’t the hysteria clickbait the mainstream media are selling it as.
The number of serious repeat ram raiders is about 100, 80% of whom are already known to welfare agencies who are the kids from John Key’s draconian welfare reforms that saw kids in cars, state house tenants thrown onto the street for wrongful meth testing and whose parents were incarcerated in our private prison industry.
How will more draconian policies fix the problems the last set of draconian policies created?
This fear mongering clickbait is generating real world ramifications with ACT and National promising ankle bracelets on children and a return to counter productive Military Boot Camps.
The same people screaming that the mainstream media are scaring us over Covid are more than happy to promote crime clickbait by that very same media!
Youth crime has spiked and it needs actual solutions, what we are getting is just more raw meat fear mongering for ratings.
The anxiety a recession creates cancels out compassion, empathy and rational debate. As the desperation drives violent crime via a Crime Porn News filter to insecure viewers, watch how the crime debate disintegrates into lynch mob level bumper sticker slogans.
Your anger is being manipulated by the ‘Get Tough on Crime’ Cheerleaders for counter productive policy and the NZ Herald is one of the worst at manipulating you!
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Watch how, if NAct slime their way into Govt., the “crime problem” mysteriously diminishes after the election despite NO substantive action. And observe also the tone-change with Groinswell, Tax Avoiders Union and other far right ginger groups pretending to be “for the people”, under such an administration.
Gosh.
We won’t fix crime or poverty if there is political bent to policy.
Labour and National and Greens and all the political parties and media in NZ have failed spectacularly.
They fail to tell the truth and actually seem incentivised to take one view point or another, while burying inconvenient facts. They then don’t even know if the facts are real or not. AKA reporting that Northland ED was 99% meeting targets, while then realising due to the outright lie, that their methods of gathering and reporting this data was incorrect which it’s not clear was due to incompetence or trying to gloss over the truth.
The only way to get out of the hole NZ is in, is to try and get professional people with honesty and integrity , and no political agenda on the facts. When someone gets Stats NZ to play political bingo, there is massive political play going on.
Most NZ politicians and media and indeed most leftie and righty commentators are more interested in beating their drum of politics than solving the problems.
Throwing money at it, while pretending it worked is not the answer. The answer is auditing very carefully where the money went and if it was spent wisely. AKA 1 billion for mental health, where did it go? The amount of corruption both large and small in NZ, seems to be growing and they keep throwing more in the direction of people who seem to be on the pigs back in government sanctioned roles, with near zero accountability.
What is clear that Labour have taken more taxes than they ever did. I can’t find the link but apparently Labours tax take is something like 50% up on what they received 5 years ago. Meanwhile a significant amount of people 40% get more tax back than they pay.
Most governments would be trying to increase those paying tax including the 40% that are getting tax back, not trying to get more blood out of a stone of people who are net gainers that are told to pay more. The tax positive people are moving to OZ while at the rate the government policy is going, NZ is going to be increasing those who are foreign pensioners and kids with minimum or no wage parents and relatives and criminals like 501’s being deported here. Not sure who is going to be looking after them, because they seem to be attracting multiple high needs family members per 1 minimum waged worker and so we are becoming worse off, not better off with our current immigration policies.
What would a labour government do? Are they ‘innit 4ewes?’ or ‘innit 4them?’
MPs should spend 2 weeks a year on the frontline with the Police and or working as a corrections officer in a prison and then as an assistant at a funeral home of the victims and families who are the result of their policies for crime, policing.
Absolutely Tane,what’s critical is the removal of the dishonest Labour Government.
By far the worst Government in the history of New Zealand.
Absolutely Tane,what’s critical is the removal of the dishonest Labour Government.
By far the worst Government in the history of New Zealand.
Good god, you now have dementia Bob, take your hand off the keyboard.
The Nact government were by far miles the worst government in history and the evidence is conclusive.
Most crimes are not even reported, because they no the police are to busy chasing traffic fine revenues for peeps going 102km in a 100 k zone.
The media are actually only getting a small number of crime story’s.
The classic. You have no numbers to support such a unmeasurable statement.
so marco if they are unreported how can you quantify them? crystal ball?
Let’s raise a glass to Cook Straight…Keeps all the riff raff up there in Pig Island , and the stats say it’s safer there anyway…Win win…
also it keeps the hick hard of thinking riff raff in the alabama of the pacific so double win rob
Don’t worry, nothing to fear, we’re all safer thanks to Labour.
Gosh yes Labour will look after us we have 6 years of proof!!!!!!!
I’m sure all the people in my neighbourhood Facebook group reporting burglaries, mail thefts, vehicle thefts & break ins, acts of violence & assaults, and store robberies are just paid agitators of the Far-Right, working to undermine the Governments brilliant performance.
I certainly didn’t expect to be stolen from or to have my lunch interrupted by a 35 round shoot out in our leafy neighbourhood. I’ve personally called the Police & emergency services more times in the last 5 years, than the previous 50.
Definitely safe as. Thanks Labour.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300940577/gang-rivalry-turned-the-streets-of-gisborne-into-a-dangerous-battleground
What else is the corporate press even allowed to report? It’s all context-free crime stories, war propaganda, Culture Wars nonsense, and barely anything that’s actually important.
Good article. It’s not just crime that the Herald is manipulating the readers with. It cost of living, it’s potholes, it’s co governance and more.
And it’s not just the Herald. ZB and Stuff and TVNZ and NEWSHUB are just as bad.
I note from relatives their concern and disgust at large sums of money being given to gangs and they imply there are no strings to it. I don’t know as I concentrate on the overview of society that produces the gangs and the way our economy is run so economically! But does anyone think about the large sums that government takes from their ‘unearned profits’. Perhaps there is a sort of understanding (unwritten, unsaid?) that government and crime has, in order to keep a lid on things. There certainly must be with alcohol and that would explain why cannabis can’t be made available to people as citizens with reasonable safeguards, but can only be squeezed though a crack in the wall of forbidding laws, as medicinal made by corpses and at high prices.
As Shakespeare might have said below. (My point being that criminality is nurtured from the type of childhood received; whether it is fairy moral or with desire for self-gain down to survivalist.)
Tell me where is crime or
fancybred,Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply. It is engender’d in the eyes,
With gazing fed;
and fancy dies In the cradle, where it lies.
William Shakespeare: “Tell Me Where Is Fancy Bred”
poetryloverspage.com
https://www.poetryloverspage.com › poets › tell_me_wh...
The media seriously gave no shite about the victims of this crime. Who were they? Working men shot at work, and a big snore, and whatever, the funded media moves on to rich bloated blisters leaving—good ridden- I hate this government funded media so much.
personal interest stories are bullshit they ALWAYS find a single mother with a disabled child, that way our 3rd rate apologies for journos don’t have to address the issues….but we do get to ‘tut tut’ into our beans on toast
So did you like the previous government funded media?
because for the most part everyone knows N.Z.’s media is controlled by National’s business consortium.
“maybe it’s a parenting problem” – Some wag said re 8 to 14 year olds ram-raiding in the wee smalls – but is it a Chicken and Egg thing (which came first?) – so apparently they got rid of the eggs in NZ can’t blame parenting? Have to think about that – but i know straight away the problem can’t be solved? – now – in NZ.
Comments are closed.