To What Extent do the Media Represent the real situation of Crime in the UK - Essay Example

Wrong message directed at children by means of advertising. How crime is put in front of the audience. The ways used by media to bring to surface ethnic differences between groups are sometimes leading to a widening of gap between theses rival ethnic group. Methodology: Since it has generally been believed that by watching television, one develop acceptance to new beliefs, values and perspectives. As explained by the social cognitive theory and social learning theory, a person started to reflect things which he has learned by watching television.

This in turn starts to shape the future behaviour of the person. These models also prove that too much watching of violent material over the television makes a person insensitive to violent actions and he starts to take his violent behaviour as a normal condition. Many studies have been conducted on the impact of media message on a children, majority of these studies have concluded that by viewing violent actions a child is very likely to display violent behaviour in his life. In this regard parents have a mighty important role to play.

They need to interpret such actions in a way as to put them in a negative light in front of the child. They should discourage the child from adopting such behaviour (Dowler, Fleming, and Muzzatti, 2006). Media Portrayal of Crime: These day parents are facing a tough time from their child while shopping because advertisers have started using children as a source to influence a purchase decision. Parents are feeling annoyed with trend because their child is demanding those objects which they would not like their child to have.

It has also been found that media has been very untruthful when describing the level of crime prevailing in a society and the groups which are involved in those crimes. In this regards it has been found that media has often over reported these two aspects, leading to the spread of fear and mistrust in the society. This has created an environment in which people feel fearful about the prevailing situation (Greer, 2005). Media sensationalism in this area of reporting has made people accept police focused and law and order responses to crimes.

As a result of this the law enforcement agencies are avoiding preventative measures, just to create their utility. Media whether intentionally or not has reinforced the stereotypes associated with a particular group, it is the way media portrays the condition of these groups is the point of contention. The way media describes these groups, it is sometimes very derogatory for that group. This description makes these groups an object of pity, erode their self-esteem (Surette, 2011). Not only does the media hurt the feelings of these groups but also it creates an unfavourable image about this group in the minds of the people viewing this portrayal (Livingstone, Allen, and Reiner, 2001).

The fundamental problem in the presented message of the media is that they just want to publicize the incident. The media never looks into the matter in detail, for instance media considers or shows that the reason for the conflict between two ethic groups is the underlying ethnicity of these groups. This obviously is a single piece of the puzzle; it does not try to discern factors which are leading to this conflict (Marsh and Melville, 2009). It is therefore of utmost importance that every country should have a media content monitoring body that conducts an audit of the content