Violence: Blame it on the media. We are too quick to balme the media for all of our childrens violent acts. It satrts with good parenting.

Violence: Blame it on the Media

Recently, violence in the media has received a lot of scrutiny. Many individuals have grown concerned with increasingly explicit television shows. Just last week two brothers murdered their mother and cut off her hands and head. Their justifications for committing such an act, they saw it on "The Sopranos" (Martelle, 2002). According to an article that appeared in The Irish Times, "Watching violent acts on screen, night in and night out, twists our view of the world". This assertion's absolutely ridiculous. Many of these violent acts appear on the nightly news. The news isn't twisting our view of the world, its just reporting real life events.

The author argues that, "we are desensitized to violence and are less shocked by real reports of human pain and suffering" ("Shock Horror," 2003). This is a complete contradiction to the assertion. How could we be more affected by fictional violence rather then real life violence? The majority of television viewers can tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

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In essence, the author's arguing by watching Wild E. Coyote use violent methods to try and catch the Roadrunner an individual's more likely to commit a violent act then by watching someone blow up a building. Hell will freeze over before cartoon violence affects us more then real life violence.

In a study conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the average 18 year- old has witnessed over 200,000 acts of violence on television alone. Currently there are 72,293,812 children in the United States under the age of eighteen (U.S. Bureau, 2003). How many of these kids watch television on a daily basis? Most likely it's a substantial amount. How many are going to grow violent after watching an explicit program? Probably very few and these...