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Media Corporations Profiting from Violence Essay

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Media Corporations Profit from Violence

Whether it is a body found along the road, a school shooting, or planes flying into the World Trade Center, the images will be replayed over and over on Television ad nausea.. The most horrific acts may eventually be retold in books and movies. Packaging and selling the violence of the moment belongs to television - and television will keep reminding us of it.

The special custom-made armor covered his body from neck to toe. As the black-clad gunman wandered the street, randomly firing a high powered semi-automatic rifle at Los Angeles police, a city sat transfixed to their televisions, hypnotised by the unreal events unfolding outside their doors. When the LAPD realised that the …show more content…

With up to 3/4 of the world's television audience watching American programming, the tool of American conversation is becoming the tool of the world's conversation, and the topic of conversation is violence.

American television viewers have an insatiable appetite for televised violence, and as they become desensitized to violent images they seek out stronger images. The image providers have discovered a novel way to increase the intensity of the violent images -- move away from entertainment violence and show real violence. In the past few years real "life and death" programming has become more commonplace on television, both as news and entertainment programming. Shows like Cops, Real Life Encounters with Wild Animals, and Real Highway Pursuits have begun to appear on our television screens with an incresing regularity. These programs routinely show acts of real violence, caught on home video. Television news directors have adopted the credo "if it bleeds, it leads" to such an extent that it has almost become cliche. The thrill of watching fake violence is waning and being replaced by the drama of watching real violence. And the higher the body count, the more we watch.

Nothing manufactures violent images on a larger scale than a war and, consequently, American television reaches its zenith of violent images and mass

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