How The Media Needs to Be Held More Accountable for Destroying Society

When Fox News hires Sarah Palin and tries to call her a news analyst

That kind of tells you all you need to know about their type of "news" 

I had taken a bit of time off from writing lately in an effort to try and "re-charge" after all the crap that has happened with the elementary school shootings and the way American society has re-acted (or failed to react appropriately if you ask me) to gun violence and violence in general in the media and society as a whole. While I have already made my opinions known about guns (as in the 2nd Amendment in the US is BADLY misinterpreted and, has in fact been bastardized to justify the American obsession with owning guns), there is another element that has to be addressed and that is the impact of media in the desensitization of society towards violence. 

Now, I know this isn't the normal type of topic I would choose to talk about but I am getting fed up with all these disgusting horror movies coming out week after week and seeing how people are just flocking to them like lemmings. The problem I see is that as a whole, society is no longer satisfied with movies about normal everyday life. We have become so numb to everything around us and the daily dulldrums of their monotonous, boring life that the only way they can feel anything is to be scared silly.  

In a developed and free society like ours, every form of entertainment and expression is welcome and allowed to be, but the problem I have with horror movies is that it really isn't the kind of entertainment that we should be exposing our children to. Yet, this week's #1 movie in North America, a horror stupidity called "Mama", should not have it's commercials running 24/7 on just about every popular channel like it is. Exposing children (anyone under 16) to such violent and fear inducing imagery is not a good thing for their higher brain development. Given how prone kids are to suggestive material they are exposed to, its no wonder that we are seeing more and more of them act out violently just based on the commercials they see alone.  

Their were more horror movies released last year then

every other genre of film other then porn 

Instead of being in a position to be there to teach our children not to be scared of the images they are seeing, parents are working crazy hours trying to pay for the latest video games (which I will get to as another problem shortly) being used by them to babysit their kids. Our kids no longer being parented by their parents, When they are, it's a rarity. What we are seeing is an increase in absentee parents (mothers and fathers) which is resulting in more and more kids lashing out. What's the easiest way to make your kids behave nowadays? Drug them up of course. Their are kids being drugged up as young as 5 now on riddelin and other drugs because docs say they have this or that when really all some of them need is to have a  parent around to supervise them and teach them right and wrong. To me, with the way our society is now "ON" 24/7, we simply do not have the time to actually be parents anymore.

This new dependency of parents to explain away the issues of their children on illness and pump them full of drugs is making pharmaceutical companies rich while driving the mental health care field out of business. Once these children start to grow up and exibit many more symptoms of illnesses that they have now been diagnosed with because of the same drugs that they have been pumped full of for years, they become reliant on a broken mental health system that can't help them. What we end up with are mentally unbalanced individuals, living in their elderly and aging parents' homes (usually in the basement), playing video games all day because they can't handle social interactions with people for a multitude of reasons. Which leads me to video games  

I admit, I was a child of the 1980's and I grew up playing video games for a significant portion of the day (even moreso in the summer). I was playing sports on Sega. NHL Hockey, baseball, football, golf. Not these 1st person shooter games that are so realistic now, you can become so embroiled in them that you almost forget what is real and what is not. I actually bought and have Call of Duty: Black Ops and stopped playing it after it started to get into my dreams. When you stop dreaming about what you want your life to be like and start having nightmarish dreams about killing people like you see in a video game, it's time to stop playing the video game. But the problem is that despite the age warnings, these kids end up spending hours playing the game regardless because of? Absentee parents working away, trying to give their kids everything when the most important thing they need is their time.

  When your video games go from Sonic the Hedgehog to this,

you know that there are going to be people with issues   

This doesn't exclude the actual News media themselves. They took their cues from the way former President Bush handled his 8 years in office. His was a presidency based on fear. He was able to successfully keep the electorate scared, ripping off the tactics of US News media which has been constantly elevating their scare tactics (successfully driving up ratings at the same time, might I add) for years. I admit, I watch a lot of Jon Stewart as well as Stephen Colbert and they often point out just how ridiculous this type of fear-mongering is. The problem is that they are in the minority when it comes to this obvious position. CNN is notorious for doing this, just like most local news channels, but the worst offender is Fox News. 

When President Bush was in office, they could barely stop themselves from falling all over themselves in support of just about anything he said and/or did. Hardly ever did you hear a commentator on Fox EVER openly criticize the White House over ANYTHING they did. Ever since President Obama took office, every policy he has enacted, even the ones he KEPT from the Bush years, has been attacked, villified, butchered, called socialist in nature, anti-American, and communist. I honestly do not see how they are able to get away with the things they say about the President. The only thing they haven't said live on air is the "N" word in reference to Obama.

 I know I am picking on Fox News, but it's SO EASY!!!

They have far surpassed the point of being anything other then a bunch of racists spouting off and trying to scare Americans into an overt form of racism against their own President that (I would say) borders on treasonous. Never once did Fox even questions the faulty premise presented by the White House for invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Never once did they question when it was clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Yet they question and disect everything that President Obama does. Health Care Reform, the Bank Bailouts, wanting to close Gitmo, his appointments to the Supreme Court, his current selections to key positions in his own cabinet. 

I know I kind of went on a different tangent but my point is this: Media has been using scare tactics so much that even they now have veered off in a different direction since the public at large is no longer reacting to them in the same way. 

The one thing I can't stand is when people in the media start saying things like "this is the wrong time to be talking about an issue like this". If this isn't the time to talk about violence in your society, after a horrific event like Sandy Hook, then when is it time? Wasn't it time after the Columbine shooting? What about after the Virginia Tech shooting? Or maybe after the Batman theatre SHOOTING (I sense a trend), was it time then? These are the same people that think Sandy Hook could have been avoided if the teachers had had guns with them in their class. What a brilliant idea. We don't have enough guns and violence on display for our children already as it is, lets saturate them even more by having their teachers packing heat in the CLASS!!!?!?!?!

We have to address the main issue that is making kids feel the symptoms of

depression: Absentee parents

 

There will be those among you who may read this and just dismiss my arguments because living in Canada, we are bombarded on a daily basis with the same images that Americans are. While this is true, we have had specific safety nets and social institutions in place for generations now that protect us and insulate us form the kind of societal problems that you see in the US. We don't have people falling into a vicious cycle of being in jail or on the street when they are mentally ill (at least not on the same level as you see in the US). 

You don't see people in Canada falling into severe poverty because on an inability to pay your medical bills. You don't see the kind of violence overall in Canadian society whether it's in the media and the alarming civilized manner in which we hold our elections, deliver the news or generally interact with each other. You don't see the same number of guns or gun violence or even gun related deaths (in terms of ratios of course) here. While all that is true, we are just a different people despite our similarities.

There is no denying that the media has a vital role in our daily lives. If they would simply accept that they need to be more accountable and need to stop using scare tactics to try to make people do what they want, then we might be able to see some real changes in American society. For the moment, with all the voices shouting at the same time, it seems that it will never happen.