The US mainstream media has little to do with foreign perceptions of us. At most, they see the massacres here, not the day to day nightly news. While there are mass shootings occurring around the world, there are quite a bit more here. That is what makes the news in Europe. Another irony is that while I was there, many college students passed their time watching Fox news in the evening, because they thought O’Reilly, Hannity, and Beck were comedians, like Stewart and Colbert. When told that Fox was a real news outlet that people took seriously, they typically reacted with something like “What is wrong with you people?” So, if anything, our image to Europeans has more to do with the right wing media, not the left.I mentioned movies and entertainment not as a primary source, but it does have an effect on our image. We glorify guns here. People watch movies and want to be like Bruce Willis, Charles Bronson, or Clint Eastwood, carrying a gun to protect the streets from criminals. You said crime is going down, but so are the number of gun owners, which means that citizens carrying guns is not a reason for the drop.
The US mainstream media has little to do with foreign perceptions of us. At most, they see the massacres here, not the day to day nightly news. While there are mass shootings occurring around the world, there are quite a bit more here. That is what makes the news in Europe. Another irony is that while I was there, many college students passed their time watching Fox news in the evening, because they thought O’Reilly, Hannity, and Beck were comedians, like Stewart and Colbert. When told that Fox was a real news outlet that people took seriously, they typically reacted with something like “What is wrong with you people?” So, if anything, our image to Europeans has more to do with the right wing media, not the left.I mentioned movies and entertainment not as a primary source, but it does have an effect on our image. We glorify guns here. People watch movies and want to be like Bruce Willis, Charles Bronson, or Clint Eastwood, carrying a gun to protect the streets from criminals. You said crime is going down, but so are the number of gun owners, which means that citizens carrying guns is not a reason for the drop.