Bowling for Columbine

When I walked into class and saw that we were going to watch a Michael Moore documentary, I immediately had some preconceived notions about what the movie was going to be like. I had just finished watching his documentary on George Bush, Fahrenheit 911, and I realized how biased he was towards political issues. However, I was glad to see that Bowling for Columbine was much more straight-forward, presenting facts from both sides of the argument of gun control. The one thing that stood out to me the most was the statistic that Moore gave about the relationship between actual gun murders and the amount that is covered by the media. I forget the exact number, but basically he stated that there has been a decline in the number of gun-related deaths over the years, but the media's coverage has gone up by like 3,000%. I think this really speaks to the way we are evolving as a society. Forty years ago, people turned on the news mostly to hear stories about political events, war, and other stories that actually effected the lives of every day citizens. Today, the majority of our news is made up homicides, robberies, and mass murders on the loose when, in reality, they only directly effect a very small group of people. It seems like the news is attempting to cater to our desire as a society to hear shocking news stories. In media class, we learned about this theory called "mean world syndrome." Basically, it stated that the more TV one watches, the more fear they are likely to have of the world around them and the more they are likely to believe they are in immediate danger of falling victim to one of these crimes. Maybe if people all watched less network news, we could learn to not be controlled by our own fear. I mean hey, it's working for Canada...