Media Bad. T.V. Good.

K. Walker

English 101, Section 016

November 22, 2005

Media Bad. T.V. Good.

Nothing on T.V. is ever worth watching anymore! Have you ever heard this before? This of course is not true, because there are amazing amounts of programs on our television all the time that are worth watching. I do not think that anyone could come up with a good argument of how the History Channel has caused the collapse of the American society, and how we would be better off without any sort of news channels. There are plenty of reasons why the television is one of the greatest assets we have today, even if not too many people want to believe it. I actually happen to believe that there are some stations that provide information that is beneficial to us, even though many Americans do not seem to be watching them, and that CSPAN is one of the greatest tools of democracy we have, even though we seem to pass by that channel too. However, with all of the positive attributes that can be given, have you ever really noticed how much junk is on television? It seems that our tool of mass information and amazing amounts of knowledge is being hijacked by the most drastic views of vice, drama, and fear that could possibly be imagined. This has obviously led to the belief that the television, the marvel of information, news, and entertainment, is the bane of society. The problem that the majority of Americans need to realize is that it is not the concept of the media and television that is causing this problem. It is the lies of vice, sex, and violence that makes some parts of television that has led to the decline in the quality of our media and the views of our society.

One of the reasons our media has taken a decline in its quality is the amazing amounts of violence that many producers of media seem to just throw at us and claims is really happening. There is of course violence in our culture. As horrible as this is it is just a part of life that we must deal with, but is mainstream media representing real life when it uses violence as much as it does in its programs? In Medved's essay, That's Entertainment?, he talks of Paul Verhoeven, "author of such worthy ornaments to our civilization as Robocop and Basic Instinct" (Medved 771), and his view that the media of today is only a mirror of what our society is really like. Medved then states, "This argument runs counter to every statistical analysis of the past twenty years on the distorted imagery of American society purveyed by the entertainment industry. All serious evaluations of movie and television versions of American life suggest that pop culture portrays a world that is far more violent, dangerous, sexually indulgent (and of course, dramatic) than everyday American reality." (Medved 772) He then provides facts to support his contrary view of Verhoeven's by writing, "Georger Gerbner, a leading analyst of media violence at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, concluded after thirty years of research that characters on network television fall victim to acts of violence at least fifty times more frequently than citizens of the real America." (Medved 772) In case you decided to skip over that last part I will repeat that last part: "fifty times more frequently". Somehow that does not seem very realistic to me. This same violence seems to spread through many parts of television including children's shows. On the American Physiological Association's website it addresses the increasing violence in children's shows by saying, "Studies by George Gerbner, Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania, have shown that children's TV shows contain about 20 violent acts each hour and also that children who watch a lot of television are more likely to think that the world is a mean and dangerous place." (www.apa.org/pubinfo/violence.html).

In Mackay's article, Media Mania: why our Fear of Modern Media is misplaced, he brings up the subject of the influence of fear on our children. He states, "There's a widespread belief that children are becoming increasingly aggressive and that their aggression is being fuelled by a steady diet of media violence." (Mackay). He then goes on to tell how widespread the problem is. He states, "Everyone can give you an example of a particular child or adolescent who has become violent because of their exposure o certain TV programs, movies, or videogames. (If they can't give you a particular example, they will confidently assert that this is known to be a general problem)" (Mackay). With beliefs like this one it is no question why many Americans view television as a major problem to our children and us! He then goes on to state his observation that, "How easy we gloss over the alternative possibilities! We seem almost intuitively to go for the causal explanation first. But is it not possible that children with a violent disposition -- created by all kinds of psycho-social factors -- might have an insatiable appetite for violent media programs?" It does seem easier to claim that television is the cause of our children's violent characters instead of claiming that, like in common economics, there was a demand for the violent shows before the supply was made available.

All of this violence has also contributed to another reason that many Americans have taken a less than flattering view of television and media in general. This problem that it contributes to is the overwhelming amount of fear that is pumped into us all the time. Who wants to turn on the television and watch only the bad parts of our society? Do you not think this would cause a negative effect on the opinion of media in itself? The answer to that is of course, "yes." I think a few people turn on the evening news in hopes that a shooting has occurred next door, but yet we still watch it.

In Jaap van Ginneken's book, Collective Behaviors and Public Opinion, Rapid shifts in Opinion and Communication, he addresses the issue of so much pointless fear that is being given to us by our media. One of the examples of fear that is sited by Ginneken is the food scare of mad cow disease. He quotes, "Who does not remember the mad cow 'madness,' a food scare that made the greatly expanded beef markets collapse almost overnight in 1996? It is an illustration of collective fear and panic, which sometime overwhelms us" (Ginneken). Ginneken makes a very good point of showing how much influence the media has over our views. This specific example only shows us that nothing is beyond its influence; not even the beef industry. However, if