Media and Moral Panics: TV made them do it?

News Article:  Bitter dregs of a pop culture gone Red Bull

On September 22^nd 2010, 18- year old, university student Tyler Clementi committed suicide after learning that his roommate and another friend had setup a webcam in his college room and had streamed live footage of Tyler and a friend having a sexual encounter.

In the article above from the New York Post, writer Phil Mushnik begins by stating that he is not shocked by the behaviour of the teens who committed this crime and that he blames the demise in the quality of TV, as well as, Red Bull for the actions of the teenager’s committed this crime.  The author claims that the two teenagers, who have been charged, have been “targeted, trained and conditioned to be remorseless wise guys”, seemingly through the immense power of TV shows.  

Sensationalised articles like this one use emotive language in an attempt to ignite moral panic and as a result increase readership. Moral panics are characterised by a group of people which decide that the behaviour of another group presents a significant threat to society and as a result demand action be taken to remove this threat (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009).   Is TV solely responsible for the basic lack of respect shown by these educated youth when they decided it would be a good idea to film their peer in the privacy of his bedroom and broadcast this on the internet?  I think this type of sensationalist and emotive journalism is why media literacy education is important in our schools. It is important that youth learn the skills to critically evaluate the media they are exposed to.  

I think it is very sad that the death of Tyler has lead to this poorly written and antagonist article which appears to me to be purely a grab for ratings.

Julie

Reference

Goode, E. and Ben-Yehuda, N. (2009).  Moral Panics : The Social Construction of Deviance.  Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.  Retrieved October 8, 2010 from Electronic Book Database.