Violence is the most dramatic form of conflict, and it is nearly always treated as newsworthy. The attraction of violence explains the relatively heavy coverage of crime and its capacity to sell papers and attract viewers. So routine have some types of crime become, however, that they draw only Links Of London Bracelets(http://www.linksoflondon4u.com/bracelets-c-180.html) perfunctory coverage. "Repeatedly bludgeoned with crime and violence by every medium," writes Baltimore Sun police reporter David Simon: Our culture is now so bored with ordinary tragedy that we only become excited by those crimes that are larger, more unlikely and more bizarre. During the year I spent in the Baltimore homicide unit, the only murders to make the Baltimore Sun's front page involved two separate incidents of arson that claimed the lives of three and two young toddlers, respectively. The rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, abducted as she walked home from a city library branch, made the front page of the metro section. The death of an 81-year-old woman, sodomized and then suffocated in her South Baltimore home, ran on an inside page, next to the weather chart. Still, a violent event is likely to be a matter of community concern, of great interest to many people. This is particularly true when the vulnerable have been the victims of violence. The McMartin case is illustrative. In August 1983, a mother reported that her young son had been molested by Raymond Buckey at the Virginia McMartin Pre-school in Manhattan Beach, California. What followed were "lurid news reports of children being raped and sodomized, of dead rabbits, mutilated corpses, and a horse killing, and of blood drinking, satanic rituals, and the sacrifice of a live baby in a church."7 Six years later, after a 30-month trial, a Los Angeles County jury rejected nearly all of the child molestation charges against Raymond Buckey and Peggy McMartin Buckey. In the wake of the verdict, the media that had covered the charges and trial engaged in self-examination. David Shaw, who covers the media for the Los Angeles Times, wrote a four-part series on that paper's coverage. The series concluded that the paper had consistently favored the prosecution. In Shaw's judgment, the media's role was "pivotal and sometimes distorting." Some alleged that it was the news media that had "pressured authorities to push the case." The first report on the case was aired Links Of London Necklaces(http://www.linkslondon4lover.com/necklaces-c-142.html) on KABC-TV in Los Angeles on February 2, 1984. Ongoing reports by KABC-TV were promoted by newspaper ads placed by the station showing a battered teddy bear. The first KABC report combined drama, violence, and disclosure. More than sixty children, it said, "have now each told authorities that he or she had been keeping a grotesque secret of being sexually abused and made to appear in pornographic films while in the preschool's careâ€"and of having been forced to witness the mutilation and killing of animals to scare the kids into keeping silent." The news norms of drama, conflict, violence, and disclosure, coupled with the desire to be first and to stay competitive, prompted KABC to downplay such other journalistic norms as two-sidedness and balance.
Please Rate this Article 5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
