Analysis Of The Article 'Some Of Us Can T Handle The Truth'

Our perception in regards to reality is frequently “in the hands of” of our community, and we form our beliefs in regards to what is real is through the media. Therefore, the documentary “We Need to Talk about Sandy Hook” by Sofia Small storm and the film “Wag the Dog,” by Barry Levinson are both examples of how the media tries to deceive people. The documentary has deceived the pubic into believing that the Sandy Hook Massacres did exist, and Wag the Dog tries to trick the public into believing that the United States will be at war. Both films use deceptions that are planned by the government to deceive the public for their own needs. Therefore, although people rely on media for legitimate information, they never know the truth unless it was experienced first hand.

Fear mixed with public view about rising crime rates contribute to a lack of faith by citizens in the criminal justice system. I believe that the news wants more ratings sometimes so they try to exaggerate a story to make it sounds interesting and exciting. Social media has a major impact on people’s attitudes especially young people. People read something that’s so convincing and believe it immediately. They don’t do any research of their own to get a point of view of all sides of a story. I believe a good example of attitudes of people was the Alton Sterling shooting. The altercation was videoed by witnesses and went viral. People automatically were condemning police because they shot and killed a man that looked defenseless in the situation. People just made assumptions and social media impacted their view on what happened. Not until later was the detailed story of the incident came out and the body camera footage. Some people changed their minds, were indecisive or still believed what they first saw and heard. Media caused a major response of public attitudes on how and why this happened. It caused attitude change of how we view the police. Citizens didn’t feel safe or protected rather targeted because of their race. This case caused a domino effect almost because of the negative attitude towards police officers here in Louisiana and the rest of the country. I believe media has a major impact on citizens attitudes because it can cause a

Pop culture media, like Law and Order, has a way of showing people how crime is portrayed. Case (2013), mentions that past studies about the representation of crime in the media has increasingly shown fear to the public and portraying unrealistic standards of how crime is in the real world. Media likes to exaggerate how things truly are in the real world, which is why people believe what the media portrays. People will believe that everything they see in a television show can truly happen in the real world, which certain things can happen but not everything. If people end up believing in how the media portrays crime then people will be living in fear of their society being more violent than it actually is (Case, 2013).

In, “One Man’s Rumer I Another Man’s Reality, Gregory Rodriguez, an author of the Los Angeles Times he argues about the power of broadcasting the truth and its effect on the people. As a result, “can false rumors and off-the-wall theories be corrected by broadcasting the truth” (Gregory Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2009)?

Criminal cases being more publicised will cause the viewers to be distressed about the number of murders and robberies occurring in Canada. The media will catch fire over these felonies causing many people to talk and spread the news making it seem like there is an epidemic of crimes even though the police-reported crime rate in Canada has been decreasing for over 2 decades. However, since the news stations and media will be broadcasting to the public about all these scandals and modify some of the facts to make it more “entertaining”, many people will believe it and think there are many criminal acts committed in Canada than there really are. The point here is that what the media chooses to focus on often times becomes the facts regardless of what the actual facts

(Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009, p. 6) The media’s representation of a rapidly increasing violent crime rate is not supported by statistics which reflect that while the crime rate is rising, the rate is steady and it is believed that this number could even be fluctuated by the increase of victims reporting these types of crime to the police. According to the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2007, 74% of the respondents had quite a lot/a great deal of confidence in the police to solve crime. (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2007 p. 16-17) Although the statistics show the general trend of violent criminal offences is static, a significant proportion of our population still has the perception that our crime rates are increasing (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2010) due to media influence. Another way the media misrepresents Australia’s crime rate is by selectively reporting violent crimes whilst under reporting other offences, which are more prevalent in society.

Many times, the media is the main cause in contributing and encouraging the creation of crime myths. The mass media have responsibilities to update the public on the activities occurring domestically and internationally. Stories or reports have to grab the attention of viewers and often times this is accomplished through methods of dramatizing and sensationalizing stories. Instead of stating solely fact, mass media reports have become bias opinions, allowing for it to evolve into more of an entertainment business rather than news.

It is important that news sources provide facts because not only does that allow viewers to choose a side, but it also informs him/her about what is going on. An individual should not have to search for the truth; every source should give both sides of a story. Each individual should be able to find the truth in a single source. Since this is not the case, viewers are having to look for the truth. Watching the news on the television mostly shows only one side of the story and the sources do not pay attention to other opinions which makes the viewer stick to that belief as well. However, in today’s generation, most individuals do not rely on television for the news. These individuals utilize electronic devices to find out about recents news. The viewers hear or read about different perspectives and are able to decide what they agree with and disagree

There is a plethora of crime related movies, TV shows, video games, etc. Violent portrayals of crime are everywhere. As most Americans do not have any personal experience with the criminal justice system, public knowledge of how it operates comes mostly from the media. Dowler (2003) did a study on the relationship between consumption of such media and fear of being victimized by crime. He found that there is, in fact, a relationship and people who consume more of this media are more afraid of crime. “Regular viewers of crime shows are more likely to fear or worry about crime. Similarly, regular crime drama viewers are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward police effectiveness.” (Dowler,

Most people use second hand information as their core source of information about crime, this source of information usually being the media. When carrying out sample research in Birmingham, Susan Smith (1984) discovered that 52% of people obtained most of their information about crime from the media, 36% obtained it from hearsay or alleged experiences of friends and neighbours, 3% from their own experiences, and 1% from the police service themselves (cited in Jones, 2001; 8). However the media tend to exaggerate upon areas of criminal activity causing a moral panic. ‘A moral panic is a semi- spontaneous or media generated mass movement based on the perception that some individual or group,

The quote “… thinking and acting as if opinions and feelings are just as true as facts” from the article proves this to be true. Americans act on what they feel to be true versus what is true. According to Bertrand Russell, “In any inquiry into the nature of truth, two questions meet us on the threshold : (1) In what sense, if any, is truth dependent upon mind ? (2) Are there many different truths, or is there only the truth ?” This begs the question of how many truths are there really, are there many or one.

There are so many conflicts in life and when people go to find the truth, the media is the first to be looked at. People like to think that there is correct information from the media but in reality there isn’t. There was a book written by Bernard Goldberg called “Bias” where a CBS insider exposes how the media distorts the news. This books lectures about how news networks need to get a reality check since there is bias fed to the media. This happens when there are a large group of people who think alike that use group thinking. These groups usually get filtered news that are not all so true. The news is supposed to be where people get facts about what activities or events going on in the world. Although stories can be changed when too many like minded people make the decisions on what an audience or reader views.

The information that is put out through the mass media is filtered, so it not only has pieces missing, it also has bias reporting’s. Obviously, they want you to believe what they believe, so they are going to brainwash you into thinking that. When it comes to crime, we examine it the exact same way the media does. That’s the goal. The media has shaped our perception on crime and criminals, to the point where we do not bother asking ourselves, why is this wrong? Why are people being sent to prison? Why are there some people who are getting harsher penalties for trivial crimes? It is not completely our fault. We are programmed to not think these thoughts. Society thinks, ‘‘well there are people who

The public depends on the news media for its understanding of crime. Reportedly three quarters (76%) of the public say, they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news (Dorfman & Schiraldi, 2001). After reviewing five hours of reality crime television shows, one is left with a very dismal look on society and a prejudice towards minorities as they are largely depicted as the perpetrators of crime. This new genre commonly referred to as reality television appears to be sweeping the nation by storm. Opinions vary, depending on whom you ask, to what extent reality plays a role versus the selling of a product. Sensationalism, advertising, ratings hype, profiling and fear all comprise the mass

The importance given to certain crimes in the daily newspapers and other media sources shows us proof to the fact that crime is a topic that has the public’s interest and is a focus of their worries (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001). It goes on to discuss the fact that crime as reported on by the media increases the public’s levels of fears and that there is little or no correlation to actual levels of violent crime in our society today.