one consensus amongst various media sources, be they radio or tv, is that the media itself is partly responsible for hyping up school violence by feeding far too much footage of recent events, such as those at columbine high school in colorado, to the public.
some tv broadcasters have decided to band together and refuse to show video footage of such incidents, while others examine this problem as a voice-over to repeated scenes of the bloody violence at columbine, weeping youth and parents, and police running around with guns.
it is about time, though, that we see more tv stations accept a role moral responsibility, rather than showing the pornography of violence with a simple "aw shucks, we know we shouldn't show this since it only revs up the killing machines, but we'll give it to you anyway because we know you want it [wink]."
let's take for instance the case of Stanley Faulder. not so long ago he was big news, his impending execution in a texas prison finally turning heads and making headlines.
yet how many people know whether or not Faulder was saved or executed?
Faulder was given a stay of execution just hours before he was to die of lethal injection. however pleas by a range of individuals, including Lloyd Axworthy and Madelaine Albright, and organizations like Amnesty International, have not been enough to stop texas governor (presidential hopeful) George W. Bush from keeping the execution on track again. the new date is june 17th, this being the 11th attempt at executing Faulder.
the question is, where is the media now?
they scamper away, sniffing through the detritus of society to find ever more juicy and exploitative stories.
t's interesting how the media has handled all the school violence lately. first they tried to show as much footage as possible, then when that was over they continued the issue by breaking into debate over what is causing all this violence, as they do time and time again.
e live in an age of media-saturation, with too much information flooding the brain, too many stories for a person to keep track of. it is the role of the media to filter through the enormous amount of information that comes flooding in from ever increasing news sources, and often what is hot today is dead tomorrow.
send your media-bites to ypress@syntac.net