Making Sense of Media

Some basic questions What is the role of media in our lives? How do media shape our culture, both positively and negatively? How can media reflect and sustain a vital democracy? How can the media undercut a democratic political system? How do we take a “critical perspective” about media?

What do we need to study in Mass Media? the powerful dynamics of media economics the impact of media on community and global life how the media influence our personal desires and choices as consumers our role as citizens who can shape media culture (though we are also shaped by it)

Headline: Students Shot in Littleton, Colorado, High School Perspectives from 60 Minutes (broadcast 25 April, 1999)

Robert Van der App, Film Industry Lawyer “If we’re going to have a society where we’re only going to allow the distribution of films and movies that are not going to provoke a response in some aberrant individuals, we’re going to be watching Bambi without the shooting of the mother, because we simply can’t predict what is going to set off any particular individual. We are all, in 1999, bombarded with violent images: violence in Kosovo, images of shootings every day around the world. That is part of the culture we find ourselves in.”

David Grossman, Lt Colonel, Green Berets (retired) Grossman called violent video games “murder simulators” and believes such games as Doom influenced the recent rash of school shootings: “Here’s what’s fascinating about that crime [in Paducah, KY]. He held that gun and fired one shot at every target. Now that is not natural, but video games train you, if you’re very, very, very good, what you will do is fire one shot, don’t even wait for the target to drop, go on to the next and the next and the next. And the video games give bonus effects for head shots.”

Doug Lowenstein, Head, Trade Association, Video Game Industry “I understand as a parent that in a tragedy like this we want to find somebody to blame because it defies everything we believe in as a society. And so we point to a video game. Unfortunately, in my view, the causes of violence in this society, the causes of tragedies like these school shootings, go far, far beyond video games. There are violent video games and some children play those, but what we’ve done as an industry is attempted to provide the best rating system in the country for entertainment products to give parents, particularly, informed and reliable information.”