In another study by McDevitt (1996) two different data sets were gathered, where one was of a national New York Times Index and the other was from a local Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. All news stories that were relevant to child abuse that was found on these two different newspapers were examined. McDevitt (1996) found that, the media visibly has an influence on concerns involving child abuse. It serves to alert, stimulate public judgment on the issues, influence policymakers, and call problem agencies to account. (McDevitt, Suzzanne; 1996). Since this study supports the idea that the media has a huge influence on the issues of child abuse then as a society we must hold the media accountable to report these issues appropriately instead of destructively.
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Vague and disjointed language makes the public perceive the issue as “not a big deal”. As Dorfman (2011) presented, the media fails to express how the community feels about the incident and what could be done to prevent these cases of terrifying abuse. The media language redefines child abuse cases as less severe and makes it seem like child abuse is due to adults making a mistake. For example, there are many cases where parents forget their children in the back seat of their cars only because they either did not see them or have been going through so much stress that remembering their child seems like a hard task. The news media talks about other people’s lives; thus they need to be reasonable and take a more balanced approach when talking about others specially victims of child abuse. In another piece named, Language in the News: Disclosure and Ideology in the Press, authored by Roger Fowler (1991), he argues similarly to other authors that we need to inspect more closely how language works in the news media. Fowler affirms: “If children’s rights are to have any meaning, we need to pay close attention to the language used to describe both the child who has been abused or neglected and the offences committed against him or her (Fowler, 1991; …show more content…
Because nothing was mentioned on these categories I reminded myself of the current news reporting that occur on child abuse today. Today when child abuse cases are displayed in the media most cases are of white children. Rarely do we see such emphasis put in minority children who have been abused or even kidnapped. With the media portraying only white little girls getting kidnapped or being abused they are completely wiping out all children from other ethnicities, genders, and classes. Making it seem like children of other ethnicities, classes, and gender don’t get abused or kidnapped which is highly untrue. Putting the emphasis back on whites, reinforcing the hidden myths that whites are superior to all other races. So many children from numerous different classes, genders, and ethnicities, are abused and go missing everyday. Yet we never seem to hear about those stories and if we do it is portrayed in the media for about a week and no more than that. I believe the reason why a lot of articles on media interpretation don’t discuss the gender, class, or ethnicity issues is because it has been a topic that no one likes to discuss. It’s like the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about; similar to the example that no one wants to talk about race. There are various forms of media out there today and not to say that all media
Vague and disjointed language makes the public perceive the issue as “not a big deal”. As Dorfman (2011) presented, the media fails to express how the community feels about the incident and what could be done to prevent these cases of terrifying abuse. The media language redefines child abuse cases as less severe and makes it seem like child abuse is due to adults making a mistake. For example, there are many cases where parents forget their children in the back seat of their cars only because they either did not see them or have been going through so much stress that remembering their child seems like a hard task. The news media talks about other people’s lives; thus they need to be reasonable and take a more balanced approach when talking about others specially victims of child abuse. In another piece named, Language in the News: Disclosure and Ideology in the Press, authored by Roger Fowler (1991), he argues similarly to other authors that we need to inspect more closely how language works in the news media. Fowler affirms: “If children’s rights are to have any meaning, we need to pay close attention to the language used to describe both the child who has been abused or neglected and the offences committed against him or her (Fowler, 1991; …show more content…
Because nothing was mentioned on these categories I reminded myself of the current news reporting that occur on child abuse today. Today when child abuse cases are displayed in the media most cases are of white children. Rarely do we see such emphasis put in minority children who have been abused or even kidnapped. With the media portraying only white little girls getting kidnapped or being abused they are completely wiping out all children from other ethnicities, genders, and classes. Making it seem like children of other ethnicities, classes, and gender don’t get abused or kidnapped which is highly untrue. Putting the emphasis back on whites, reinforcing the hidden myths that whites are superior to all other races. So many children from numerous different classes, genders, and ethnicities, are abused and go missing everyday. Yet we never seem to hear about those stories and if we do it is portrayed in the media for about a week and no more than that. I believe the reason why a lot of articles on media interpretation don’t discuss the gender, class, or ethnicity issues is because it has been a topic that no one likes to discuss. It’s like the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about; similar to the example that no one wants to talk about race. There are various forms of media out there today and not to say that all media