When I expressed horror and outrage at the notion that the TSA can go through your luggage, an American friend told me "well if it keeps us safe...", so I'd say "afraid".

First of all, it's not at all clear that this implies fear as I understand the emotion.

More tangentially, as I usually fly outside the US, it's fair to say that this is far from just an American reality. For example, the Dublin Airport even explicitly mentions that hold baggage may also be searched by hand on their website: > "Both your carry-on luggage and check-in baggage will be checked by means of detection equipment and may also be subject to a hand search." [1]

I have a hard time believing that airports with any restrictions on what check-in/hold baggage may contain (virtually all of them, if not all) don't have any provisions for searching bags, although maybe I'm wrong here.

[1] https://www.dublinairport.com/at-the-airport/security

Maybe they have provisions, but the only time I've had my luggage searched was in the US.

That doesn’t sound like fear but acceptance.

Although, what country doesn’t have the ability to dig through your luggage? In my personal experience, Europe is the only place that I’ve seen armed officers dig through 100% of the bags on a flight while the entire airport watched.

If you have a family member that watches Fox News and then check some of their primetime programming out, you'll see both the fear and where that fear comes from.

And you could do the same with CNN and MSNBC. Don't single out one source, they're all peddling fear just in different ways.

Whenever news org echo dire Gov warnings

[1] without vetting the evidence (or highlighting the lack thereof) &

[2] without the context of how often these turn out to be true/false

they're part of the FUD Generation Machine

I don't really disagree but I will single out Fox News because it's completely valid to do so. They are a much more blatant offender than any other outlet and essentially wrote the playbook on fear-mongering for political gain in this country. It's silly to deny the extent of their influence on the media landscape in your desire to seem equitable.

Fox News did indeed set us on that path initially, but it's also silly to deny the extent of the rest of the networks' buy-in into this playbook.

Fox News' use of the "FOX NEWS ALERT" interruptions and the fear mongering were quickly replicated by all the other major cable networks in an attempt to compete. All of the networks were complicit in selling us into war with lies,

I think it's really more silly and uninformed to single out Fox News, given the current media ecology and political climate. Today's CNN and MSNBC will do things that are simply treacherous, making Fox News look tame by comparison. We're in a new era now.

Fear and sensationalism sells news - yes. And Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are guilty of that - yes. But that does not mean they are in any way equivalent or as-bad-as-each-other. They are not.

Fox News uses fear - and the degree at which their resident pundits use falsehoods and misrepresent the truth - and use fear as a partisan tool to push one single political party - is far beyond CNN and MSNBC.