Violence in the news vs violence in entertainment

News of violence is to blame, not video game violence or movie violence.

The news shows footage of wars going on around the world. Real violence encourages real violence. Entertainment violence does not encourage real violence.

What do you have to say about that?

People against violence in entertainment are dead wrong.

Tell the news to stop reporting violence, and see if violence reduces at then.

News encourages people to also want for themselves 15 minutes of fame. Am I wrong? Or am I right?

Discuss.

reply to post by WarJohn


how do you know? I could argue the opposite. Movie violence can be way more over the top and certainly has the potential to be more of a cause.

I tend to think it's a perfect storm of issues combining in the worst possible outcomes for those already prone to dark places in life. Video game violence with movie and cultural norms defined how they are these days is part of the problem, IMO. Never the cause, but part of the factors contributing.

Past generations and eras didn't have a hyper-speed race to the bottom in how low one can go for killing as pure sport with graphic detail as near life like as it's literally possible to be in a strictly 2D world. Virtual Reality will just erase all lines, completely for visual impact and experience when it someday becomes workable in any of several forms.

This doesn't quite compare to the 'violence' of Flash Gordon or the TV show "SWAT"...let alone Castle Wolfenstein before modern video cards. It has to have influence and impact. The problem is that behavior is the only way it CAN be guessed at, since those being impacted, by definition, have nothing to compare it to for contrast.

reply to post by WarJohn


No.

I agree that violence in entertainment doesn't make violent people.

However, violence in news doesn't either. In fact the opposite is true. All mainstream news is heavily censored so that joe public doesn't see the true results of the policies he supports to buy his false feeling of security.

Propaganda is as much about omission as it about fabrication.

A bit more pure uncensored violent reality on the nightly news might lead to a little less needless human suffering.

We also have to keep in mind that violence existed way before cnn, video games or movies...

What's the difference? News is entertainment.

It's hard to establish any kind of connection between the viewing of violent images and the tendency to commit acts of violence, though, so you may want to revisit your original premise.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Past generations and eras didn't have a hyper-speed race to the bottom in how low one can go for killing as pure sport with graphic detail as near life like as it's literally possible to be in a strictly 2D world.

No, they just did it in real life.

Sacrifice
Gladiators
Display

Am not making a particularly sophisticated arguement, but don't really care to. The violence that games and movies gets blamed for has been around for ages and access to the spectacle of violence for those who want it is nothing new.

Edit: These aren't even close to the worst examples I can find, I just posting ones that won't hurt people's souls as much

reply to post by Pinke

I'd say again that it can't be called the cause. Saying video game violence causes an individual to do something they otherwise wouldn't is absurd. I wouldn't suggest otherwise. So on that, we agree... However, these are a couple sets of data on the topic from the NIH.

By the time they reach age 18, American children will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence (American Psychiatric Association, 1998). Media violence can be hazardous to children's health, and studies point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors in some children (Congressional Public Health Summit, 2000).

Source

That sheer volume isn't what has always been the norm by any means. It simply hasn't been. The rate, violence and brutality of what is on shows around the clock now is unprecedented. As just one example, the real violent shows (in whatever context the violence was depicted) was generally held to prime time, which by itself limited the non-stop nature of the exposure today,

It isn't a cause but I just can't see how there isn't some effect in HOW cold or HOW brutal people already predisposed to be criminal tend to be now. The totally casual disregard for life is growing worse, IMO.

Violence begats violence. The news, movies, video games and the like being demonized are simply reflections of a violent culture. You can't blame forms of media for violence because they wouldn't exist without the support of that culture. They were created by it.

Reporting violence and personalizing violence by interviewing the victims loved ones and making the perpetrator famous or two vastly different things. I do not begrudge the media for reporting the news. I do however believe that personalizing it has horrendous ramifications. They do it for ratings/money, plain and simple. It is the very corporate greed that they claim to hate. They could care less about the adverse effects on society. Subliminal messages in commercials was banned for a reason. What they are doing has the same effect.

I don't know if it's news of violence itself, but rather the whole negative theme of news media in general. It seems that a negative theme is the main criterion for selling news stories, whereas showcasing positive, uplifting stories is rarely encouraged.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by Pinke

 

It isn't a cause but I just can't see how there isn't some effect in HOW cold or HOW brutal people already predisposed to be criminal tend to be now. The totally casual disregard for life is growing worse, IMO.

edit on 12-1-2013 by Wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)

People just change how they dream and fantasize I suspect. That would be a major effect.

Example, prior to movies most people used to dream in first person. Now we dream in 3rd person a lot more. I imagine some persons prior used to dream of publically executing an enemy or something when now they imagine what they would scream at them whilst holding a hand gun.

I like Penn and Teller, but they can be wrong sometimes. They did a video games episode where they gave a child an assault rifle to fire. Poor thing was shocked by how it felt etc .... Is the same with my brother. Played violent video games whole life. I was with him when he saw an actual beheading for the first time and he went pale and was very upset.

I think for most[i/] people violence and fantasy are a bit seperate. Some people certainly can't tell the difference or lose sight of it. That photographer that took a picture of a starving child about to be eaten by a bird for example has seen so many starving dead children that it didn't occur to him to help at time. That person commit suicide I think.