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Desensitizing of the Mass Media Donna Scyoc University of Phoenix SOC/105 DR. Brand Bowler August 28, 2010 Desensitizing of the Mass Media Most people who hear, read and or see about events like, the violence on television rarely give it a second thought. TV is just one way the mass media changes us. Violence overseas, in America and in third world countries are constantly in the news. You see dead people lying in groups, you see bomb destruction and horrific situations and you rarely process the whole amount of information being given to you.
In government issues, we hear about illegal or immoral justice about our president, senators, or government elected people but we do not run to the phones and talk about it nor do we allow ourselves to get distraught over these things. We are becoming a deaf nation: we are desensitized because we are constantly being bombarded with news like this. We dismiss is rather quickly because in our minds we feel are hands are tied and we are trapped for many reasons. We might be going to a job that is demanding, have children and have many other important issues on our plates and do not have time to think about these issues.
If we only heard about these issues once in a great while we then may act on those issues in a way which we would push our elected officials to act. There are so many intelligent people in the United States and we end up with a bunch of liars, scammers, skimmers, and we cannot put faith in our government anymore because we have become so media swayed by all of the negative things they do that we hear but we do not listen to even the good things anymore. The media plays an important part in the mass culture that they can literally brainwash us into thinking different ways if we listen to them speak all of the time.
Do we really care anymore? ,or do we just plain deal with the fact that someone has to run this country and even if they are into illegal things and are we just plain desensitized to those facts of corruption we hear, see, and read about every day. We have and probably will not forget about Columbine and the Twin Towers but has much of anything changed because of these events that should have been put in place before these tragic things happened. Look at the O. J. Simpson trial, that trial was not about justice, it was a trial about race.
They showed people in mostly black bar’s watching it and cheering for O. J. Simpson. Then they showed people in mostly white bars talking about it. Everything about the trial reeked race. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about mass media, his staff built an underground railway in New York to his hotel so the majority of people could not see how crippled he was. He was a smart man. People can be so vein. I overheard a conversation by a prominent white man and his wife. He said as he watched John MC Cain on television,” How could any one vote for such an old crippled man. I wanted so bad to go to his table and tell him about how he was became a little deformed in his arms. He was deformed because he was a prisoner of war and he had been tortured. America cannot even solve their own problems, for instance, securing the borders, teaching young children in inner cities who grow up dodging bullets rather than sitting under a tree or playing in their back yards instead of the streets. Social security is another issue the government cannot solve that is reported. The media got a lot of people upset when they reported on how the senators received their cut.
These are a few issues from the media that irritated a large number of Americans. Nothing has changed because the media portrays a picture of hopelessness and helplessness about the government and because most things you see from the media about the government are negative. There seems to be an overwhelming sense of dismay about these issues. Do we really know the truth? The media tells us a story but can we believe what they says, and after digging through all the rubbish who really knows the real story? REFERENCES Wilson, J. R. (2001). Mass Media Mass Culture. New York: The McGraw-HillCompanies.