Question: Why is there so much conflict in the media?
“Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you and I’m going to let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time, of all time.”
“You lie!”
“When I look at it now I’m just like wow, like, I can’t believe that that actually happened.”
Sounding too familiar right? How many times have we heard of the latest outburst from Kanye West? Or read a headline about the disruption by Joe Wilson? What about every channel’s never ending coverage of the various Chris Brown apologies? I’ll tell you how often: about two dozen times too many.
The media is constantly displaying cheated-on-his-wife-laundered-money-got-caught-speeding-and-now-has-a-DUI headlines for its viewers to see. The majority of the news has some form of conflict, drama, or controversy present, and as the years have progressed, the explicitness and vulgarity in most media content has become overwhelming.
According to the Media Education Foundation, an individual will witness over 200,000 acts of violence and 16,000 murders by the time he or she turns 18. And this is all from watching your basic everyday television.
Violence is not all you’ll see — sex and profanity have invaded our flat screens, MacBooks and iPods too. According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, sexual content is featured every four minutes on network TV. Due to the blatant usage of verbal profanity nowadays, cable TV can easily be mistaken for HBO, and it’s nearly impossible to turn on the radio without hearing some type of degrading word or sexual reference.
“If you watch the news the first thing you see is something negative because it startles people, it attracts people,” said urban planning sophomore Elliott Williams. “The media doesn’t look for good; it’s insensitive sometimes.”
But why is this? Why are political scandals and heinous crimes taking precedence over local fundraising events and breast cancer awareness walks? Why do the top news stations interrupt daily programs to broadcast a 15-minute apology from a golf superstar who cheated on his wife? The answer may surprise you: It’s because these are the types of things we want to see.
Viewers have the power to determine the media’s focus; everyone on VH1 isn’t actually looking for love, they’re looking for ratings. So I pose my next question: Is it the media that’s obsessed with conflict or the society that watches it?
Both are to blame. Society has replaced value, quality and substance with sex, violence, and drama on its “must see” list. By airing a catfight on the latest reality TV show and covering the Illinois senator’s impeachment, the media is simply feeding our own gossip and conflict-filled desires, yet failing to provide meaningful content.
Not convinced? The next time you watch your favorite show think about if the element of conflict was eliminated and see if you’d leave the TV on.
Reach Shala at Smmarks3@asu.edu
