Personal Space.

Our media is a reflection of what the audience is interested in as a majority, whether that be seeing car crash victims, a burning building or a sneezing panda. Our media caters for our wants, rather than our needs. Of course, I am in no way saying that seeing dead bodies from a catastrophic incident, such as the brutal attack in the Colorado cinema shooting as a way of entertainment. But this is the sort of things the media makes its living off, without sensationalism and exaggeration how many people would even bother picking up a newspaper or turning on the news?


Journalists and media professionals around the world are there to inform the population, yes, but also to get people talking. Word of mouth is always going to be the best news coverage, especially now with every type of social media imaginable, it gets what the media sets out to achieve, for peoples ears to prick up and take notice. This is nothing new its just become more apparent as we become bombarded with media news and images almost every waking moment. When I say this is nothing new I mean it has been happening for hundreds of years, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1176040/Jack-Ripper-invented-win-tabloid-newspaper-war.html.


The voyeurism of the media however does tend to continually push the boundaries, seeing that the media in a case of being able to get the best story possible, are selling out for their own sense of humanity. Capturing footage of a woman's final moments with her dying child and showing this on a national basis is not OK. There is no need to push these boundaries to an unnecessary point where already grieving families are put under more pressure of having their personal intimacy and privacy invaded.

I feel this is a question of how much is too much? Where is the line we cross to make a great news story? Surely the media can pull together a way of making a story without the necessity of making a front page spread, from the belligerency of a lunatic who, mentally ill or not, could not see the difference between a movie and peoples real lives. Should this be OK to get what the bad guy wanted, for the media to make him into some sort of commercially manipulated "villain" or should we become more interested in the strength that has been found within the survivors and their families?
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-07-22/world/world_europe_norway-shooting-anniversary_1_breivik-charges-of-voluntary-homicide-fight-multiculturalism


The media realises how much influence it has on its audience, maybe its time for it to do some good with its power and prove us all wrong.