When it comes to the way we as a society consume media we have a tendency to be a lot more tolerant of certain things that might not normally be in our day to day lives.
Things in the news and in the media that we consume regularly such as social media, movies, TV Shows and music have slowly made us tolerate of a lot of things.
Photo: Star News
Specifically, talk and displays of violence, news outlets especially have been known to glamorize vicious killers though out the years.
In relation to Lee Bollinger’s theory on us as a Tolerant Society, I believe the media has a lot to do with the things we tolerate today.
The news is something that nearly everyone in the world has access too in some form. Which means many people are seeing and consume it some form of news daily.
So when we see flashy headlines of crimes such as school shootings, people being accused of using derogatory language or slurs, or mugshots of convicted killers it normalizes these things.
In Criminal Justice there is a theory on crime that is called the ‘Wedding Cake Model’. This model pretty much breaks down the different levels and systems of crime.
Photo: Pinterest
At the top of the cake which is also the smallest part of the cake is celebrated cases. This means stories about Ted Bundy, The Unabomber, Son of Sam etc.
The model explains that though this is a very small part of the crime world, stories like these get the most publicity and thus formulate public opinion on what crime is like in the world.
Photo: University Of Oregon
This also means that the world mostly has an incorrect idea of what majority of crime looks like as well as what majority of criminals look like.
George Gerber, a former Journalist who studied the link between the media and crime coined the phrase “Mean World Syndrome”.
Photo: Good Reads
This theory supports what the ‘Wedding Cake Model’ tried to explain.
The “Mean World Syndrome” is the idea that the world’s outlook on crime is not proportional to the actual rates of crime that we face in America.
Through his research he found that one of the main reasons for this disparity was because of the media’s portrayal of crime.
It also says that a main reason for this thought is because of our extended exposure to violence in movies, video games, and music.
Our high tolerance of violent images, hate speech and derogatory language mades it easier for us to brush off things that aren’t as ‘extreme’.
This could be things that aren’t necessarily illegal but things that could be immoral or seen as implicit biases such as hate speech; which is protected by the first amendment.
After studying both theories and recounting my teaching thus far in my journalism class I understand how the media at times plays up certain stories.
At the end of the day however, news outlets rely heavily on views so it makes sense that the stories and the titles would be punchy and attention grabbing.
However, I can understand how the media can over hype different aspects of stories. For example, I had a teacher who gave us a perfect example of this in class.
On a slideshow she had multiple images of normal looking people, some pictures were old and some were more recent.
She asked us if we recognized any of the people, I recognized three of the people but not the rest of them.
Photos: INews, Daily Star, All Thats interesting
Then she switched to the next slide and it had mugshots of infamous killers and I could recognize almost every person on that list.
Photos: Wikipedia, Psychology Today
The pervious slide had been the victims of said killers which no one recognized.
She explains how the media has a role to play in this because when bad things happen there is always more coverage of the perpetrator or the thing that caused the incident, than there is of the people and the things effected by it.
Although that’s was an extreme example, it does explain a possible reason for our high exposure to violence on TV.
Though in the media’s defense It also isn’t very tasteful to splash a victims photo all over the headlines to allow for their privacy.
At the end of the day the world is always evolving and with evolution comes problems as we as a society navigate though everything.
I agree that our tolerance for certain things in the media has became extremely high, however though my research I was able to lean about some reasons as to why.
It also helped me get a clearer view about how many different topics can overlap and help paint a full picture.
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