Media may really be to blame as it gives people different perceptions.

I was high last night watching National geographic and something came to me, We have different levels of exposure.

There was a cute playful fox frolicking all about, and the wife was all "awe, look how cute", and said "why would people hunt them?"

That's when I said, people used to keep chickens. So people learned to hate foxes because they wake up in the morning and their entire henhouse would be massacred dead bodies all over. Foxes could kill your livelihood and starve your family.

So before media.... before we could see these cute high definition playful animals at a safe distance... our ancestors just saw them as devilish vermin. People who lived in areas where there were no foxes might not have had as much animosity towards them, But people who lived in areas where foxes existed, learn quickly to hate the motherfrickers.

Tertiary exposure to something may give you a flawed belief about something. Those who have to live next to something and deal with something on a daily basis may have a more grounded belief about that something.

Learning something at a distance makes us believe we know, but we don't really know until we actually have to jump in the water with sharks to form an opinion, should I fear sharks?

TL;DR: Maybe media over the past 50 years has given humans various levels of exposure where people form opinions at a superficial level without intimate knowledge of something that they are forming that opinion.