Crime and the Media

Recently, it has come to my attention how much the media plays in the role of reporting crime that happens in this country. There are are quite a bit of issues that they have that make the reporting less than reputable. Here they are:

  1. Lack of research. The media does not always do all of their research about the crime they are reporting on. So this means that all of the information is not always correct.
  2. Exaggerate. They tend to over talk certain aspects of the crime to make them sound worse than they are.
  3. Fabricated 'experts'. They will bring people on to talk about profiling a criminal or just to talk about them, but they don't have the necessary credentials to even be doing it.
  4. Over emphasize ethnicity. They will focus on if it is a certain ethnicity against another. If it is the same one against the same, then they tend to not focus on it.
  5. Ignore the victim. They always talk about the criminal. They tend to forget about the victim and it should be about them.
  6. Too much blame on Law enforcement. They will place the blame on the cops for not having control over things, but even if they are, it is not their fault that bad things happen. We always seem to want to play the blame game when something bad happens.
  7. Create (manufacture) panic. They tend to try to scare you if it is a particularly horrifying crime. They tell you how horrible it is and that people should be on the lookout. Its as if they are trying to frighten everyone.
  8. Political influence. They are usually driven by whoever backs them. If like say a group or a Demorcrat backs a certain news station, then they will be more leaned towards Democrats way of thinking.
  9. Racial bias. They will always mention race if it was involved. It seems to make more people pay attention to what they are saying.
  10. Rating driven. The news will always report on something if it will further their ratings. As horrible as it is to say, nasty and horrible things sell better than small things that happened. So they will report on the really terrifying things.
  11. Competitive. The news channels are all trying to get to the news first, which can lead to the first problem. They are rushing so much that they don't take the time to get all the facts straightened out first.
  12. Overgeneralized. They tend to tell you that this crime is happening everywhere and all the time.
  13. Ignore the process. They will just tell you the end game, rather than telling you how they got there. They tell you 'we caught the man responsible for all those killings' but they don't tell you how. They should talk about it because it took someone a lot of work to get to that point to catch the criminal.
  14. Glamorize the offenders. They will always talk about the criminals. About what they did and how they did it. While the poor victim gets pushed to the back, which is a complete travesty.

These are just some of the ways that the problems that media has on reporting crime. I'm sure there are more, but I just thought it would be interesting to share this.

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