News Media Versus Defective People

Violence in the Media The presence of violence in the media has been a rather prominent and controversial issue for some time. Its presence as an important issue has been made all the more important and presence by the fact that there is now 24/7 cable news and a concurrent 24/7 news cycle. This omnipresent news cycle is present on the internet as well. Some people decry the fact that so much of the news is violent while others say that the journalists in question are just reporting what is going on.

While there are points to be made for both sides but the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality is in full effect and the news media seems all too ready to give the dire predictions and push the narrative they want consumed and believed when the time comes. Analysis There are some that say that violence in the media is to blame for violence in people.

This is a silly claim because violence in people existed long before the inventions and presence of television, video games and other forms of media that bombard us every day. Indeed, the presence of violent crime has actually been decreasing over the last few decades while video games and media have concurrently exploded in quantity and degraded in quality.

The other side of the coin are the people that bemoan the presence of violence in media and act like there were some "good old days" where the violence was not omnipresent in the news cycle. What this viewpoint fails to take note of is that violence has always been present whether or not the media has been portraying and amplifying it. However, there is a problem going on .. two actually ..

and the media is involved with both of them to some degree even if they are not personally to blame. One problem is that the manner in which many children are being raised has become quite sad and, in some instances, dangerous. There are children that spend more time watching violence and depravity on television rather than being "raised" by their parents and this would obviously include the news media.

However, this is not the news media's fault as it is the parents' job to put these pictures, events and images in context. Since those conversations are not happening, morals are not be taught and values are not being instilled. In some cases, mental illnesses are not being taught or they are being created due to environmental exposure and active abuse.

Even worse, some parents are using drugs, abusing each other and so forth in front of children and this ends up in children that have very skewed pictures of right and wrong and extremely distorted moral codes, if they are present at all (Mattejat & Remschmidt, 2008). However, the other problem falls squarely on the shoulders of the news media. While they do engage in reporting what is going on, they also do something else a lot of the time that is very dishonest and sometimes insidious.

There are often narratives that they push that are political or ideological in nature. One can take the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson as an example. Many point to the fact that Brown was unarmed and that his hands were raised. However, forensic recreations of the shooting and the fact that he had just robbed a store paint a different picture.

Regardless, there are a lot of unknowns and suppositions being made but this has not stopped the media from allowing their coverage to swerve ideologically in one directly or another. Some media believe the police officer verbatim and say that Brown "probably got what he deserved" while others say that Brown was "executed" even though the officer's version of events and at least some of the forensics suggest that Brown initiated the physical part of the confrontation.

Of course there are things that are not known for sure and we will probably never know with certitude whether Mr. Evans (the cop) was telling the truth. The news coverage should reflect what is known and what is being stated rather than the narrative that is to be pushed. The same precise thing happened with Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman may very well have done some immoral and improper but there were too many unknowns to charge him with a crime.

It could very well be that Brown and Martin were shot in cold blood. However, believing it, knowing it and proving it are all different things. However, the media coverage has not reflect that. The real problem going on is that news media has devolved in much the same way as cable in general, not to mention the internet. Rather than it being about the facts as they are known (or not known), it has become a free-for-all that is about getting viewers and using salacious terms.

The cities where these controversial have occurred, which include St. Louis, Baltimore and Sanford, FL, have all seen a major uptick in murders and violence. The author of this report will not go so far as to say that the media coverage is the cause. However, it is a factor and it is certainly not helping when analysts go off what is known and get too far into what is not known. Conclusion It remains to be seen what direction the news media will take in the coming years.

However, the current arcs and trends are less than encouraging. Indeed,.