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The Media's Negative Effects On Law Enforcement

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When an individual chooses a career in law enforcement they realize it can be a very rewarding, yet dangerous career path to take. Most people often hear about all the potential dangers such as officer involved shootings and physical confrontations before making the choice to join the ranks of the few who will always stand for what is right. However, today there is a new danger to law enforcement known as the mass media which adds a whole new realm of difficulty to an already taxing job. The negative effects of the media can be felt nationwide by law enforcement agencies and these effects include creating a divided community, unrealistic expectations, and the devastation of current and future law enforcement careers. This presentation …show more content…

According to Weinblatt (2005), “The sanitized version of American society started to crumble in the 1960s as the social unrest of the era changed the earlier perspective of policing”. The 1960’s civil rights movements created a lot of controversial images and news clips which were viewed across the millions of television sets in the United States. Mobile news reporting and the advancing portable camera technology helped capture heated exchanges between police and citizens. Simply conducting an internet search of police in the civil rights era provides hundreds pictures where African Americans are being hosed, bitten by dogs, or forcefully moved due to …show more content…

The media understands which topics are going to cause people to stop everything and listen better than anybody else. One of those topics is racially motivated brutality by police officers. This has become a major issue in the United States lately and the media adds fuel to the fire any chance they can get for their 15 seconds of fame. A good example of how the media turns regular law enforcement incidents into a topic of race is the way they word their headlines. This is especially true of articles as they want catchy titles in hopes of catching the attention of readers. Getting an individual to actually take the time to read an article is tricky business today as reading is considered by many to be a lost art. What better way is there for the media to attract attention than by saying a certain race is under attack? For example, the title “Man Tasered for resisting arrest” probably would not garner that much attention by today's standards. However if it gets a media makeover and is now, “Black man Tasered by officer for resisting arrest”, it will likely receive more attention. This is an unfair practice that stirs up more controversy and hate for law enforcement officers from those who can’t see past the racial propaganda. Cases like these are popping up all too frequently and as the reader has probably seen they can lead to civil unrest and

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