Media Framing....Good or Bad?

I wasn't very familiar with media framing until I read the article for today. After reading about half of the article I could tell that I was not a fan of it right away. The more I thought about it the more outraged I became about our country as a whole. The media is such a powerful manipulating tool for people in our country and this article showed exactly why.

I do agree what happend to Matthew was a tragedy, I am not arguing that. What I am arguing is how much and how extensive the coverage of the case actually was. Yes what happend to him was horrible and yes those guys who did that to him are absolute monsters and deserve their life in prison sentences. But my complaint is the lack of coverage other things in our country gets. The example I shared in class is perfect in my opinion.

For anyone that watches the news they know the south side of Chicago has been like Gotham City the last year and a half. Cops have no control over the killings and gun control their yet we rarely hear about the murders that are taken place. They are just numbers to middle/upper class white America. And on the other hand look at the Sandy Hook shooting. Now I know this is an extreme case because they were all kindergarten and 1st graders. But everyone in America can tell you what some of the kids look like and what their names are because of the extensive coverage we saw on every channel for a solid 3 weeks. But like I mentioned in class, no one can tell you any of the 65 kids ages 4-18 names that were killed in 2012 in Chicago. The reason for this is simple, our middle class and upper class families can relate with other white middle/upper class kids better than we can with kids in the slums on the south side. Is this right? Absolutely not, but its the harsh reality of the country we live in.

In my personal opinion I think that the media has WAY to much persuasive ability in this country on the average person watching the news. The way journalists and reporters word things can make people think a certain thing just like that. It isn't right and some of us as aspiring journalists like myself need to try our hardest to not frame things and therefore block out things of equal importance just because some people can't relate to them.