(1) For as long as most of us can remember, shark has been synonymous with "danger."
(2) Although the chances of being killed by a shark are one in 265 million, and ten times as many people are killed every year by random airplane parts falling out of the sky as are eaten by sharks, we still harbor an irrational fear of these creatures.
(3) But it wasn't always this way.
(4) As recently as 100 years ago, sharks were approached with no more trepidation than one might experience when encountering a jellyfish or a stingray.
(5) Perhaps, on occasion, a beachgoer or fisherman might have an accidental run-in with a curious shark, and a newspaper story would mention injury or, very rarely, death as the result of what nearly everyone considered an inadvertent mishap.
(6) But no one believed that sharks harbored some kind of innate hatred of humans and intentionally sought them out as victims—until the summer of 1916. (7) That summer, a young and successful businessman, Charles Vansant, decided to go for a quick swim one evening at a beach along the New Jersey shoreline. (8) Within minutes, he was screaming and thrashing in a pool of blood.
(9) As rescuers attempted to pull him ashore, an unusually vicious shark remained clamped to Vansant's leg, releasing its hold only when Vansant was nearly on dry land.
(10) Vansant died within hours.
(11) Five more deadly shark attacks followed in quick succession at nearby beaches, leading the media to speculate that this was all the work of a single malicious shark.
(12) Shark hysteria had begun.
(13) Labeled as "killing machines," sharks were hunted and hated, and when dozens of American sailors were attacked by sharks after their ship sank in infested waters in the Pacific during World War II, the fervor reached new heights.
(14) But perhaps the zenith of shark terror arrived when the film adaptation of Jaws was released in 1974.
(15) Portraying the infamous great white shark as a ridiculously oversized and single-minded psycho killer seeking revenge, this movie and its sequels led to an all-out war on sharks.
(16) By the 1980s, it was estimated that for every human being killed by a shark, two million sharks were slaughtered for sport, skin, meat, and fins. (17) What had been a thriving and mostly harmless sea creature was now perilously close to being endangered.
(18) In 2000, Jaws author Peter Benchley expressed his regret for writing a book that had created so much fear and hatred, and he vowed to spend the rest of his life working to protect sharks.
(19) "Today we know that almost every attack by sharks on humans is an accident," Benchley said.
(20) "Considering all the knowledge gathered about sharks in the past 25 years, I couldn't possibly write Jaws today."

1. Which sentence best expresses the central point of the passage?

a. The news media has a great effect on the shaping of public opinion.
b. Despite the movie Jaws and its sequels, we have nothing to fear from sharks.
c. Sharks were not always viewed as dangerous.
d. Our fear of sharks is irrational and harmful to sharks.