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Teen Violence and the Media

The purpose of this research is to examine the myth that teens are violent thugs as perpetrated in published media reports. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which that issue has surfaced in the modern period and then to use such reports to demonstrate that, despite solid evidence exposing the myth, media coverage of youth crime tends to support the view that there is a direct and increasingly forceful linkage between violent behavior and youth--or, to put it another way, that all juveniles are delinquents.

The professional literature as exemplified by Males (1999) analyzes the idea of widespread juvenile delinquency as a major social problem as logically and factually fallacious. Males supplies evidence showing that those who perpetrate the myth have a vested interest in urging the view that youth--particularly nonwhite ethnic and minority youth--constitute a threat to personal and institutional safety and, more generally, to the very fabric of civil society. Males's analysis is that teen violence has been mischaracterized and blown out of proportion, not only by those who do not have the facts but also by those who have the facts but whose political agenda drives their emphasis on the delinquent character of juveniles. To begin with, as a practical matter juvenile delinquency and teen violence are most commonly associated with members of nonwhite minority groups, principally blacks. That idea, Males implies, feeds an ethos of social cleavage that becomes all the more unbreachable and civil society more at risk, the more strongly it is believed. As Males puts it with respect to a comparative analysis of crime statistics in two culturally disparate states, California and Iowa, the pattern of violence between 1985 and 1994 rose much more rapidly among adults in their 30s and 40s than it did in teenagers. Furthermore, minority juveniles in California did less crime at a time when poverty, racism, gun availab...

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Teen Violence and the Media. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:50, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1689267.html