Distorted Crime Coverage on Television News Term Paper

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Distorted Crime Coverage on Television News

Violent, exploitative and gruesome crimes are more often depicted within the news media than not, in a blatant attempt to raise fear and interest within the American viewing public. Media moguls typically present fantastical images of horror stories to engage viewers, while ignoring other equally important news stories, leading the American public with a sensationalist and skewed view of crime within the States. Crime as represented on television is often distorted by broadcast agents in an attempt to engage viewers. Unfortunately this distortion often permeates the homes of traditional Americans and raises fears that are invalid and harmful. These ideas are explored in greater detail below.

Benjamin Radford defines media moguls as "mythmakers" and claims that they present a "news bias" by playing on the fears and emotions of consumers and television viewers. Indeed, news bias is created in favor of distorted crime within the majority of television news broadcasts throughout the nation today. Radford emphasizes how news media agents blur the lines between advertising, news and entertainment, and thus manipulate consumers in order to elicit emotion and response from viewers. News reporters often "sensationalize" criminal events while reporting factual occurrences, in an effort to not only engage but also entertain and captivate viewers. Radford emphasizes that the public is in fact, often if not only a daily basis deceived and misled when it comes to news media.

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The public fears many things, such as the prospect of loss of income and security, and the media plays upon these factors creating a news bias. If a news story occurs that happens to feature a tale of sorrow, loss or minor criminal activity, the chances that it will be sensationalized in an effort to raise interest is great.

Sensationalism often replaces real news within the American media. Radford points out a statement by another writer who claims that a common pitfall of news bias is "the conviction that there are two sides to every story" and writers often dig up "another side so kooks who state outright falsehoods are given a platform in public discourse" (Radford, 2003). New reporters are tasked with the responsibility of creating engaging and entertaining stories. Thus if a story on the surface seems banal and uneventful, the story will often be "tweaked" in such a manner as to provide viewers with a more dynamic and exaggerated sense of dramaticism.

The proliferance of news bias often distorts consumer's views of what is actually occurring in the world. Major world events are traditionally blown out of proportion in an effort to entertain and captivate viewers. Viewers that are afraid are much more likely to tune in than viewers that show disinterest in a particular subject matter.….....

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