There Are No Lessons to Be Learned from Littleton was published in the winter/ spring 1999 issue of Criminal Justice Ethics written by Gary Kleck, an author and professor at Florida State University. In this essay, Kleck wants us to know that after the Littleton mass shooting incident on 1999, the media failed to express the valuable lesson that we need to learn because of too much sensationalizing of the story. This kind of tragedy will possibly happen again if we tend to forget the real lesson from it.
There is lots of violence happening inside the school or outside the school premises. Some reasons are bullying, racism, peer pressure, family problem etc. In school, they need to show who is more powerful and tougher in order to survive, it’s a dog-eat- dog world. This emotion of anger and hatred begin to get intense each day and being triggered more by Television and Internet. The result is revenge. That is why I was surprised that the author mention the decreased rate of homicide and violence among teenagers now compare to years ago, as well as declining percentage of crime rate and gun related issue among youth.
Although we are entitled to know what’s going on around us by means of media, I still feel disappointed how media heavily publicized the story just to catch the viewer’s attention without considering the big sum of younger audience. These young minds might absorb the news negatively that will provoke them to create a bad idea against others. I remember a news long time ago about a 16 years old girl who killed innocent people in a nearby elementary school. She confesses that she was influence by the song “I don’t like Mondays” and she wanted” to do something big to get on TV.” Consider also that this girl were misguided by her parents because they allowing her to have her own gun.
The author not just wants us to watch these gruesome stories but also to learn from it. He believes that sensationalizing the story will not help hence encourage more young minds to do the same mistakes in the future. For us adults, we are responsible for our own children sake. We are here not just to explain the reality of what is going on around us but also to guide them to avoid such act.
Kleck has a good point of expressing to us that over exposing media violence made a huge impact to pollute the young people minds. I am satisfied of some examples he presented in this essay to justify his message. However, I believe that everything; family, friends, media, society etc. seems to be connected to each other. Everybody influence a potential suspect have an equal share for the blame. Do you believe that crime rate for youth are decreasing or it is not just been written or reported in the statistics?
No comments:
Post a Comment