Newsworthiness of Child Abuse Cases

While it is always necessary to report suspected child abuse. The Department of Human Services (DHS) does not always do the best at ensuring that the children are in the best place for their own well being. After DHS receives the call that a child may be being abused they send out Child Protective Services (CPS) to evaluate wheiter or not a child is being abuse, treat the children if they are injured, and prevent the cycle of abuse and neglect from happening again. CPS and DHS do try and keep the families together if they can but if that is not possible the child is taken out of the custody of the parents and placed into the DHS custody and eventually introduced to foster parents. Children can receive a recommendation

According to Sr. Elizabeth Thoman, the Executive Director of the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles said, the public has produced fear generated by media violence. She calls this the "Mean World Syndrome," in which the impact may not be on potential perpetrators, but on the rest of the population, who begin to believe that violence is inevitable, that crime is everywhere and that they must be afraid. The projection of violence intensifies our views of the real world, making it seem worse than it really is. As the media increasingly reports the gory details of violent acts, the public becomes more immune. It may make the children more fearful as they come to believe that violence is as common in the real world as it is on television and as a direct result children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.

This can help the wider community understand their own moral obligations and behaviour within society. As noted by ‘….Smolej (2010), portrayals of crime and deviance in the media are often seen as essential parts of social control since the media has a central role in defining what is deviant and condemnable.’

In the media there is a great deal of violence and nobody can really deny that. However, the effects media has on children and young adults have been debated for years. In this paper I will be discussing the effects of media violence, the other factors, and the possible solutions to alleviate this global issue.

Within the United States, child maltreatment is becoming more and more commonly reported as there is over 3 million reports each year. Due to the constant increase of child maltreatment reports, society has become more aware of the issue, which has led to awareness campaigns. (Payne, 87). Even with societies’ knowledge of such abuse there are still serval child maltreatment cases that are not reported. The children that are victims of maltreatment pertains any sort of harm to the child whether it is by injury, neglect, physical, emotional, or even sexual abuse by someone who holds a major role in the child’s life, a parent or guardian figure (“What is Child Abuse”).

Journalists report sensationally that children are targeted by strangers or pedophiles everywhere and children are involved in crimes because of making money, and children pull the trigger at themselves to end their lives by themselves. Glassner points out that these tragedies has a background that is prime cause of these tragedies. Prevalence of guns, for example, lead to highly success rate of suicide and juvenile crime rate, but Journalists don’t turn a spotlight on a gun. Instead, they make us believe that the world is worse than the past. Glassner analyzes that many threats are exaggerated by journalists while actual risks, such as guns, are hiding.

In the mean world syndrome video, several points are discussed about how violence in the media affects viewers. Although violent crimes has decreased over the years, the media has been showing more violent acts than before. Children have been affected by this phenomenon and it has had a disturbing effect on them too. The media should be more proactive with being fair and less damaging in the future.

The argument of what children should be able to watch is a very controversial one. With media access so obtainable these days, violent media is practical everywhere. Many writers take a stand on this, and give an opinion of how the matter should be handled. Gerard Jones and John Leo both argue their case on how the approach towards how the situation should be handed. Jones argues that violent media is good for children, since it gives them a way to escape the harsh reality; however, Leo argues that violent media is a main source for many of the disturbing acts that have happened lately. Based of Jones’ writings that provides personal experiences over opinion such as Leo’s writing, parents should take the incentive towards allowing children

The writer speaks on past experiences where class, gender, race and sexuality have possibly affected the awareness of the news media. Christie (1986: 18) describes an ‘ideal victim’ as someone who looks vulnerable, defenceless, worthy of sympathy and compassion, this would probably be upper class people, elderly women and young children, whereas young men, the homeless and those of lower class suffer from victimization more deeply, they also may find it much more problematic to attain a legitimate victim status even if their case was more severe than others (Carrabine et al, 2004). This shows that the media select stories which involve sensitive and vulnerable people because this is most likely going to intrigue the audience. The issue with

The risk that the media pushes for parents to realise for their child safety is not as severe as they perceive. The major cases that happens to children mainly revolve around child molestation, which does come under sexual assault. The statistics for child molestation/ rape in the gold coast are very limited and difficult to retrieve. A news reporter, Jessica Elder, stated that 50% of sexual offences that occurred in 2015 involved children under 17 (Elder, 2015). Children that are at the ages of 10-14 for female and males are the most attacked and the most commonly reported to the police. The lack of child sexual assault statistics is mainly due to many of the crimes are not reported as they may be too young and scared or they have just held it to themselves through their life. “In Australia, the personal safety survey results for 2012 indicated at almost 1:5 women aged 18 or over had experienced sexual assault since the age of 15” (pdf…). As for males it is at 4% for men after the age of 15 years to have experienced sexual assault. Male children, between the ages of 0-9, held the highest rate of sexual assault for men in 1997. Overall, in 1997, there were 2,858 child victims of sexual assault under the age of 10, children victims held the highest percentage of sexual assault (AIC, 2001). Child sexual assault is

In reference to the media’s role, they have been highlighted for playing a part in maintaining these views by portraying victims in a certain way according to the newsworthiness of each story

The media, in spite of the fact that it might incite or propagate forceful conduct, can't be considered completely dependable. Rather, it might be viewed as one impact that is working in an aggregate circumstance among numerous others, and is liable to fortify previous social and individual propensities, inclinations, states of mind, practices, convictions, and worth frameworks, which advance threatening vibe and

This report aims to analyse how the Australian media covers and reports crime. To accomplish this, the report will explore how The Australian covered the Cairns child murders, in the article entitled “Cairns deaths: A ‘good mum’ who concealed her demons” published on December 27th 2014. The report will provide insight into the explanation for the crimes occurrence, while investigating the prevalence of the crime type- murder, in Australia. It will also make reference to two of Chibnall’s ‘news values’: dramatization and personalization.

Crime is a social construction, and behaviour defined as criminal varies across time and place. Crime is an act that violate moral behaviour, but why is that not all behaviours that violate moral behaviour are labelled as crime? This is because crime is defined differently across different societies and different times. Neutralisation and drift theory helps us to explain why people abuse children by showing us how perpetrators rationalise their guilt for these actions before they physically, sexually, emotionally abuse or neglect children. They do this by blaming their actions on other people, higher forces or believing their acts are harmless. In this essay I will begin by talking about crime as a social construction then touch on child abuse in New Zealand followed by a discussion of how my social contract theory helps us to explain this crime.

Media violence is one of the most debated public issues society faces today. Television screens are loaded with the glamorization of weapon carrying. Violence constitute as amusing and trivialized. Needless portrayals of interpersonal violence spread across the television screens like wild fire. Televisions spew the disturbing events such as children being assaulted, husbands inflicting domestic abuse on their wives and children succumbing to abuse by their parents. Scenes of betrayal, anguish, infiltrate the television screen. Unfortunately, a child becomes subjected to media violence. Everything a child sees or hears in the media affects them in some way or another. The precise effects of media violence on children are