Ghazal Al Awad Professor Brownell English 103 06 December 2016 Nightcrawler: “If It Bleeds, It Leads” It is said that “perfection is unattainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence” (“Vince Lombardi”). Lombardi is saying that people are always encouraged to do the best they can, but they can never be perfect. However, excellence can be attained if someone keeps up the hard and stays motivated. When people are not good enough, vicious, bad, or even worse, they seem to want to relate to others and try to relieve themselves that they are not the only bad people out there. To relieve themselves, they tend to watch movies, specifically, movies about antiheroes. Antiheroes as defined in the Signs of Life in the USA book are …show more content…
Consequently, Nightcrawler is a critique of capitalism and it shows how the effects of a struggling economy can affect people’s lives and morals because often people, like Lou, cannot find jobs. Therefore, they are left to make their own immoral decisions on how to earn money and survive. Apparently, Lou is rewarded instead of being punished for tampering with crime scenes, sabotaging his competitor’s van, and causing Rick’s death at the police chasing scene. As Lou and Rick are waiting for the assailants of the homicide, they are talking about increasing Rick’s payment. However, Rick is not satisfied with the 75 dollars per day. After their discussion in the car, a chasing scene occurs between the assailants, Lou and Rick, and the police. Obviously, Lou and Rick are chasing the killers for the camera footage. Lou told Rick that the assailant driver is dead, so Rick goes to film the car, but the assailant is alive and shoots Rick to death. Lou did not care about his partner’s death, all he cared about is the fifty thousand dollars on the chasing scene. This illustrates capitalism. As Lou represents capitalism that survives on the destruction of people’s money needs and in this case, destruction of people’s lives. He exploited Rick’s abilities and need for money by disregarding Rick who navigates and sometimes photographs scenes. Lou is able to accomplish a lot with …show more content…
“Gilroy offers provocative commentary on the creation and consumption of [the] news in 21st century America. This may be true, but Nightcrawler is a powerful reminder that the situation has only gotten worse” (Nightcrawler). It is known that the purpose of local television news is to inform people about what is happening in their communities. For example, when Lou captured the homicide scene, Nina insisted on making the scene more dramatic by telling the [presenters to keep repeating] some strong words that would scare the audience and give more fame to her TV station. Nina says, “hit it harder. Build it. Say ‘vicious attack’” (Gilroy). “Nightcrawler takes it a step further by showing us how local news operates when crime rates have dropped. This dearth of violence means there will be a frantic fight to be the first on the scene when a crime does occur; furthermore, in Lou’s case, there will also be fabrication in order to make the scene more dramatic” (‘Nightcrawler’). To succeed as a TV station, news should be exclusive and unique. However, Nightcrawler has shown how news can fabricate a crime scene in order to make it look more dramatic and more frightening. It seems as if Gilroy is questioning the credibility of news and at the same time accusing the news of obtaining their news immorally. The Nightcrawler insinuates
Having served nearly thirty years at CBS News, Mr. Goldberg had earned a reputation as one of the most original writers and thinkers in broadcast journalism. However, when he observed his own industry, he realized the liberal media had completely missed their mission to give honest news. After years of sharing his observations and promoting more balanced reportings, Goldberg soon realized that no one listened because they believed they were doing the right thing. The liberal bias continued, therefore Bernard Goldberg decided to take the situation into his own hands and expose the distortion of the media himself. Goldberg’s breathtaking and shocking best seller book, Bias, reveals the close-mindedness of the news culture and their mission to entertain rather than share facts.
Walkowitz's investigation of this chapter primarily highlights the influential role of the press in the form of subjectivities and behaviors. She argues about the media coverage of these murders presented a discourse
In Chapter 2 Glassner points out that journalists sometimes employ unreliable data, give a distorted account of what happened, and tend to promote a sense of fear by the uncertain information of crimes. Halloween sadists, for example, were fictional criminals conceived by the news that children were dead after poisoned Halloween candy. Journalists reported the news as if strangers had given innocent trick-or-treaters poisoned candy. These stirred up parents’ fear of Halloween candy. However, the fact was that a boy had found family member’s heroin, and another boy died after eating cyanide-poisoned candy that his father had spiked to collect insurance money.
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)?
The “hyperbolic and racially charged news coverage” is described throughout the book. On page 124, Kathy tells Zeitoun over the phone of the news about looting and killing, but he “hadn’t seen anything like the chaos she described.” He goes on to say, “ If it existed at all..” This reveals that both Egger’s and Zeitoun know you cannot believe everything the news says. SInce the reader has been with Zeitoun through the whole ordeal, the reader is also unaware of any dangers, if any. This adds to the underlying feeling that the media is exaggerating the aftermath. Further into Zeitoun’s exploration he comes across a body and a helicopter hovering as he describes, “ A man was pointing a camera at the body. He did so for a few more minutes and then the helicopter rose, tilted, and drifted off.” This language and casual feeling in the quote make it obvious it is a media helicopter that has no intention to check on the body and see if it's okay. A rhetorical question leads into this quote, instilling hope in the reader to be immediately let down. The nonchalant of the interaction exposes how distant the coverage is to the scene. It makes the reader realize Egger’s strong disdain for the media. In my final example, Zeitoun is interviewed by “a man with a video camera” on page 167. The inclusion of the short interview and the even shorter sentences
Stewart begins his top news segment by acknowledging the violence occurring in Baltimore, Maryland and how defectively it was handled. He appeals to logos, pathos and ethos throughout the entire episode, attempting to persuade the audience of Baltimore’s mayor’s bad timing and inconsiderate decisions. He pulls all rhetorical elements together conveying a
Jonathan Schuppe, the author of “Charleston Victim’s Kin Says Trial Revealed ‘Radical Truth’ About Racism”, is an NBC News writer with expertise in the areas of criminal justice and urban issues. Schuppe has received the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and has been nominated for a PEN Literary Award for one of his books, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking-news coverage, and was honored in 2008 with the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting. NBC News is a national broadcasting station that delivers international news to millions of people daily. News covered ranges anywhere from trending YouTube videos to national crises.
Finally, there is also an underlying theme of the sensationalist nature of the media. At many times one finds Sacco talking about how he wants to see instances of violence happen, because they would make a great page for
Our images of crime can be found upon the media, this includes: Television, News Publications and Novels in which we read. It is known that news editors and journalists make the decision of whether or not a story is fit for publishing, they determine this by looking at certain values including: the risk, violence level, immediacy, unexpectedness and the amount of drama/action.
Nightcrawler illustrates that fear generates the most revenue for local news stations. When the primary focus of news stations is to scare the community, it is no longer news.
Nightcrawlers, also known as Lumbricus Terrestris, are mainly nocturnal. They can grow up to 14 inches long, and burrow up to 6 feet deep. Earthworms breathe through their skin. Earthworms can grow pieces of their body back if they are cut off, or regenerate. However, this does not mean that if cut in half, two worms will appear. The original worm will grow back its tail or its body over time. They eat almost anything organic or natural, including leaves. Earthworms are herbivores.
There is not a minute in the day where a news broadcast is not being televised. For twenty-four hours, the same repetitive and monotonous information is delivered by different news anchors. Even though they report nothing new, Americans will still watch for hours upon hours. The large majority of these television broadcasts deliver stressful and generally upsetting news, but in no way, is this a deterrent to the viewer. The American obsession with spectatorship is a phenomenon created by the inaccessibility of timely and relevant knowledge. This oddly leads to an increase in the demand and likeability of terror. In her piece “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson explores the origination with this fascination of violence and horror and gives and analyzes creations of members of this new society. American Infrastructure followed this turn towards the intense. Citizens gather around a computer or television for a chance for their emotion quota to be filled. On the surface, this may seem like an obsession with general information, but it is a release of the natural demand for power. People are always looking for a new way to increase their social standing, or at least pretend to. This idea is evident on a macro level, such as the manipulation of the economy and the lower classes by the rich, described in Joseph Stiglitz’s Essay “Rent Seeking and The Making of an Unequal Society”. But it can also be seen on the micro and specific level. Individual persons are looking
ABC News, a reliable and formal South Australian news distributer, builds a trustworthy and ethical television program while Sunrise, Channel 7’s morning news broker, provides an uplifted scaled back version of current issues in Australia. The form, language and context are manipulated to form, the purpose and bring in a set target audience. In this case the purpose of both programs is to inform the audience; however, ABC focuses on trustworthy news while Sunrise connects with the audience.
In an ever-increasingly mediated society, mass media has become inseparable with the production of everyday life. Media is now a platform for members of society to connect with global events and other people beyond their own personal experience. For many, the media is a major source of information and “accounts of violence, as presented by the mass media, are the primary medium by which the average person comes to know crime and justice” (Barak, 1994). The following essay will explore the theories of both cultivation analysis, as established by George Gerbner, as well as agenda setting, reputable to Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. These concepts will demonstrate how the recent Santa Barbara Shooting is a major media event that reflects a
In an age where superheroes are idolized for their ability to do no wrong, people tend to forget that their apotheosizing of such figures is unrealistic. In the process, people tend to overlook the more relatable savior: the antihero. With the veneration of the hero, the everyday antiheroes are pushed to the wayside when, in actuality, they should be just as, if not more, popular. As much as everyone likes to feel as though they are the superheroes of their own stories, it is much more likely that we are all much more comparable to the latter. We all struggle with moral grey areas, and sometimes we even give in to our darker desires; that’s simply what it means to be human.