Saturday, November 26, 2011

"Confession" Law and Order: Special Victims Unit

In this episode of Law and Order, a young man walks into the SVU to confess that he was thinking about molesting his five year old step brother.
The way the story is told, you sympathize with the young man for being courageous enough to seek help for his thoughts before he actually commits any crime from the beginning of the episode to his step father trying to frame him for pedophile (to get him out of the house) right up to his death.

I especially thought this episode was worthy to write a little something about because it is indeed a rare thing for the audience to want feel sorry for someone who thinks about molesting a child. Especially if you're a parent yourself, usually episodes containing such things make me want to punch the perp. However, the young man had yet to do anything, you simply feel sorry for him because he could not stop himself for thinking the way he could even though he tried so hard to do it. I also wanted to scream at the District Attorney in this episode because she refused to do anything to help the young man even after he confessed about "loving" his step brother in all the wrong ways.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Chermak - "Crime in News Media"

In Chermak's article he explains to us the importance that media and crime have to one another and how they both fit together to explain the public's perspective of what is going on in our world. While we do not exactly choose to be exposed to so much crime in out infotainment, it is put there by those in charge of writing the stories for us to see.
He goes through the four types of stories that media list crime stories under in order to determine where in importance they lie and just how much coverage they will receive.
4. Tertiary Crime Stories - These are the types of crimes that appear in your everyday newspaper, little more than a way to fill a small empty space while allowing the media to say that they are still keeping up on crime going on in the city. Not much effort is put into them as they are viewed with very little importance.
3. Secondary Crime Stories- Basically a tertiary story with potential. The media sees these stories with the possibility of it becoming something more. More research is done though can hardly be verified and more space is given for the piece. Usually ends up nowhere, also appears in your everyday news.
2. Primary Crime Stories - These are the stories that take up the best spaces in the paper such as the front page. Not as common as secondary and tertiary stories. Ends up covered in a variety of media and can be connected to a larger community issue. Also has good visual aids to go along with it.
1.Super Primary Stories- Stories that typically involve someone of notice and can be seen in news media world wide. These stories are known for having two or more articles concerning them written up on the same day. Over time they become Primary stories.
 Chermak concludes his article by stating that crime is an important thing for the media to keep track of and therefore they have determined an organizing process around it.

I find it interesting to know that  most of society accepts how the media handles all types of crimes. Unless something is personally affecting you, we are more than willing to sit back and read whatever the media writes for us and in the way they write it. The media uses the concept of peer pressure in a way that garners them a profit.They decide what is most important for us to know and we blindly pick up the paper each to read the headline of the day without giving more than a second thought the rest of the stories until after we are done with the first article presented to us.