Pornography and the Media

What is pornography? Pornography refers to any sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal. According to the online Encyclopedia Britannica, pornography refers to the representation of sexual behavior in books, pictures, statues, motion pictures, and other media that is intended to cause sexual excitement. (Brittanica, 2006) Pornography is also a multi billion dollar industry that exploits men, women and children, from infants to teens, and preys on people's interests all over the world. In my opinion, mass media has contributed to the spread of pornography a great deal. I don't think that pornography would be as prosperous as it is without the help of mass media. Pornography rakes in more revenue each year as the general population becomes more accepting of its use and further programmed by the media. (Catryce, 2006) In this paper I will give some examples on how mass media contributes to pornography and discuss some of the effects that it has on our society.

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In my opinion, pornography would not be a multi billion dollar industry if we did not have mass media. The media is everywhere we go or look. We have public and private TV screens that provide us with over a hundred different channels of all kinds of information. We have the radio in our cars and in our homes, the newspapers and magazines, and lastly, the internet, all of which are different channels of mass media.

According to an encyclopedia article on the MSN website, in 1996 Americans spent more than $8 billion on hard-core pornographic materials, such as videos, adult cable programs, computer pornography, sex magazines, and peep shows. (MSN, 2006) Statistics also show that sex sites on the internet generate at least $1 billion per year in revenue, there are 800 million...