WR 122 - Causal Argument, "Media Violence Should Not Be Blamed"

Violence in the everyday media has changed over the years. Things that one couldn’t even imagine being able to view 30 years ago are now on all the time. Some people have the belief that violence in any form of media will cause a person who is watching it to want to do the things that they see. What they do not realize is that usually when a person has done a crime based on ‘seeing it’ on television, there are other deeper, darker problems that may have set that person off. The media shouldn’t be blamed for violence, the person who commits the violence should.

A man on television did an interesting broadcast on the release of Grand Theft Auto 4, claiming that it will cause children who play it to believe that it’s okay to murder people, steal cars, make deals with the mob, and pick up prostitutes. In all reality, the only thing it will make children think is that if they do all those things they will go to jail; which in the game does happen. Saying it causes violence is false, if a person sees this and then does it, it’s because that person has violent tendencies. There was a report once about 4 teenagers who had played one of the Grand Theft Autos and they robbed a convenient store, stole cars, and attempted to run over a police officer. One cannot say it was because they played the game, but because they probably already had criminal records, and seeing the game made them want to do it. The game didn’t make them do it, they chose to do it.

The news media in the United States is far more conservative when it comes to what it shows. Very rarely will one see a person dying, or even someone getting brutally attacked. Unlike in Europe, where they show images of explosions, people dying, and nudity. When the Madrid Subway Bombing occurred images of the explosions and people dying were plastered all over TV screens throughout Europe. Could this explain the massive outpouring of support for terrorism in Europe by some Europeans? Seeing death and destruction for some people causes excitement, and the want to commit the same atrocity. People have the evil in them to cause violent crimes, whether or not the news outlets show death and destruction, some people don’t even need images to prepare themselves for doing things to others.

There was an article claiming that the United States and its citizens believe that violence is the only way to solve problems and that seeing violent images is what everyone prefers, that the evil that people do to each other is attributed by only the cinema, and the media and videogames. The Virginia Tech murderer had psychological problems; he did not kill because he watched Halloween, or because he played Resident Evil. He killed because he had psychological problems that had been foreseen by his instructors months before the massacre eve happened. One person argued that showing that he killed all those people is enough to cause the many ‘loose cannons’ in this country to see that they too can get this kind of publicity.

One person has said that a person who watches or, ‘absorbs’ as she put it, too much television that it will cause ‘harmful effects”. Sure too much television is never a good thing, but by claiming that if a person basically watches it, it’s bad. It’s obvious that whoever had written that article doesn’t watch too much television because if she did, then she’d see the hundreds of educational programs that are offered. Watching TV, whether it’s good or bad, teaches a person something. A person might learn that it’s wrong to talk back to his or her parent, that it’s okay to hug a friend or speak when they are being made fun of. Saying that it’s harmful to watch even educational programs isn’t very intelligent.

One cannot blame the media for such kind of violence that may have been copied from a media source. People are going to play video games, watch violent movies and many of them won’t even think about committing anything that they see. Violence is something that is learned, not that is seen on the TV screen. If a deranged person saw something on the airwaves then perhaps it was just fuel to set him off. A person just doesn’t wake up one day and assume that they will harm people based on what they have seen. There are deeper issues at hand… People have to be violent, in order to commit violent crimes.