Youth, Crime, and the Media
The media plays a major role in creating the distorted images of our youth that we the public perceive. Most of these images emphasize problems like crime, drug use, and teen pregnancy. The skewed coverage in today's media results in the belief that youth crime is on the rise. Today's portrayal of teens in the media employ the same stereotypes that were once only openly applied to unpopular racial and ethnic groups. Although violent crime by youth was at its lowest point in the 25-year history of the National Crime Victimization Survey, 62% of poll respondents felt that juvenile crime was on the increase. The majority of this percentage stated that they received their information from the media. As for the drug use, over the last 12 years the statistics have fluctuated in fractions and is currently down according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In the area of teen pregnancy, in a 1991 campaign to promote school-based clinics, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the National Associations of State Board of Education publ
Portrayals of teens in today's media images employ the same stereotypes that were only applied to unpopular racial and ethnic groups: violent, reckless, hyper sexed, welfare-draining, obnoxious, ignorant, according to a report ran in the Washington Post. Like traditional stereotypes, the modern media teenager is a imprecise image, resulting from the dismal fictions promoted by official agencies and interest groups. In an environment in which fear of youth crime and real crime are so out of sync, the media must explore deeper, ask why, and seek a full answer. Youths seldom appear in the news, but when they do, they are undeservedly connected to crime or violence. In one review of more than 9,600 network and local TV stories, only nine were about teens being praised for positive works. The "Off Balance" study makes a few recommendations, which includes putting crime into context by providing relevant data on crime statistics, matching stories about youth and crime with stories about youth accomplishments, and conducting voluntary periodic audits of news subject mat
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 726
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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