Violence in the Media Essay -- Essays Papers

Violence in the Media What makes the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons so funny and memorable? Of course, the explosions, hits and falls the Coyote takes while in pursuit of the Roadrunner. Pediatrics, a pediatrician read magazine, wrote an article on the influence violence, such as that in cartoons and other forms of media, has on children from ages 2-18 titled â€Å"Media Violence.† â€Å"Although recent school shootings have prompted politicians and the general public to focus their attention on the influence of media violence, the medical community has been concerned with this issue since the 1950s,† says American Academy of Pediatrics, the author of the article in November of 2001. The article calls for a need for all pediatricians to take a stand on violence in the media and help to make sure their patients are not influenced negatively mentally or physically by violence in the media, using multiple statistics from many publications. â€Å"Media Violence† fails to be persuasiv e, however, due to its failure to show any evidence that its statistics are true. â€Å"American children between 2 and 18 years of age spend an average of 6 hours and 32 minutes each day using media (television, commercial or self-recorded video, movies, video games, print, radio, recorded music, computer, and the Internet),† claims the article citing the Kaiser Family Foundation Report in 1999. This helps to show that media is definitely a major part of a child’s life which would definitely help to make in an influence, but how does a child have time for all of this media usage between school and homework? Another statistic the author uses claims by the time a child is 18, he or she will witness over 200,000 acts of violence on television alone, stated by a Un... ...ph of the section titled Influence. These are statistics of deaths among the pediatric population caused by homicide, suicide and trauma. These statistics are believable and seem to be cold hard facts, but still, even with sympathy for deaths among children, no facts are presented to show that any of these deaths had anything to do with violence in the media. With many scholarly authors, the argument is clear and well fought, but due to the lack of show of studies or reason behind statistics, the argument is lacking believability and ends up coming across as having the same impact as saying that car accidents among women are caused by the increase of caffeine in a woman’s system over the last decade. It could be backed up with statistics of car accidents and evaluating of caffeine intake, but without connecting the two it is unbelievable, just like this article.