I know tabloid newspapers are purveyors of fear just by nature, but the three large-type headlines on the front and back of today’s New York Daily News struck me as especially sensational in combination.
I don’t think we’d have seen quite this tone without the fear culture born on 9/11/01. The fact that I can paste small images below and still make my point should be some indication of the problem:



… jeez, the more I look at these, the more alarming critiques occur to me … blur between Hollywood and journalism, umbrella and basketball breaking the picture frame the same way the whipped-up fear tries to “leap” off the page, curiosity about how often we see blacks who are not entertainers, sports figures, criminal defendants (or, in a tabloid fantasy, all three!) on newspaper covers, and finally, more trivially, the fact that when you flatten the cover pages, it almost looks like Michael is looking at Marbury.