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In Favor of Regulating Media Violence Essay

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Media Controversy
With the nation's violence rate increasing over the past few years, one must ask, "why?" Harold Lasswell formulated the core of questions of content analysis: "Who says what, to whom, why, and to what extent and with what effect?" The issue of media content has become an increasingly popular, as well as controversial, topic. There have been many concerns from parents regarding exposure of their children to inappropriate themes in the media. An overall increase of violence and crime in America suggests that the children are being exposed to violence too early, allowing them to become comfortable in seeing and ultimately portraying violence. Prolonged exposure to such media portrayals results in …show more content…

In addition, high rated movies and games were found to be easily accessed by under-aged children. Furthermore, different ratings systems for each medium (television, movies, music, and video games) make the ratings confusing, because they have little similarity or relationship to one another.
One point of concern in the media relates specifically to the music industry. Recently, many new artists have made their debut with a new genre called ?rap?, which portrays the life of gangsters and ultimately, violence. This new genre has become increasingly popular and many children are led to believe that a life of violence is ?hip? and ?cool?.

This could also explain the increased gang related activity over the past few years. Parents have been concerned about the fact that "they don't write songs like they used to." When asked about the issue, one rapper said: "Being from the hood, neighborhood, I can tell you that violence didn't start from a cassette that might have been popped into a home or car stereo system.? While the fact that violence did not start from music might be true, it does not help the situation any further. If anything, it advocates violence and portrays it as something honorable to the children. As a result of many complaints, record industries have agreed to a ?parental advisory: explicit

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