Media Corporations Profiting from Violence

Media Corporations Profit from Violence

Whether it is a body found along the road, a school shooting, or planes flying into the World Trade Center, the images will be replayed over and over on Television ad nausea.. The most horrific acts may eventually be retold in books and movies. Packaging and selling the violence of the moment belongs to television - and television will keep reminding us of it.

The special custom-made armor covered his body from neck to toe. As the black-clad gunman wandered the street, randomly firing a high powered semi-automatic rifle at Los Angeles police, a city sat transfixed to their televisions, hypnotised by the unreal events unfolding outside their doors. When the LAPD realised that the gunman was covered with body armour, a call to aim for the head was shouted across their 2-way radios. The camera was in the perfect position to catch the shot. The black-clad bank robber firing at will suddenly jerked back, a jet of red exploding from his head. His legs buckled underneath him. His hands dropped the gun, but he was dead before they could reach for the massive wound. He never felt himself hit the ground. A few moments later, the television helicopter landed and began interviewing eyewitnesses. One middle-aged woman looked straight into the camera and deadpanned, "Things like this just don't happen in America."

In Amusing Ourselves To Death, Neil Postman states that "...The clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools of conversation." If that is true, then the tool of conversation in America is television. There are more television sets in American homes than there are homes, and those sets are on for an average of six hours per day, with the average p...

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...of all becomes the death of the neighbor next door.

Got the bubbleheaded bleach blond comes on at five

she can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye

It's interesting when people die

give 'em dirty laundry

Don Henley

Works Cited

1. Operation Desert Storm: Outright Disinformation Scheme, David Fingrut

2. Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman, Penguin Books, 1985, pg. 8

3. Electronic Heroin, Jay Hanson

4. This statistic comes from the United Nations radio program Perspective (no. 96/52). The program was a report on the 1996 UN sponsored World Television Forum.

5. Millions of Viewers Tuned In, But Total Never Will be Known, Mike McDaniel, Houston Chronicle, 10/4/95.

6. Felons On The Air: Does GE's Ownership of NBC Violate the Law? , Sam Husseini, EXTRA!, 11/12/94