The Entity that is the Media

          Gary Kleck, an accomplished author and professor in the studies of criminology and criminal justice, writes an essay entitled “There are no Lessons to be Learned from Littleton”. In his essay, Kleck argues that school shootings are not a ‘trend’ as the media portrays them to be, rather they are irregular and unusual - quite the opposite.

          Kleck’s argument is supported by his findings in statistics that in general, violence has actually declined and been declining since the 1970’s (Kleck, p. 211). Kleck also states that most ‘normal’ homicides are confined to between 1 and 3 or 4 victims, anything more is considered the threshold for abnormal crimes. As school shootings typically have well over this accepted amount, they are considered unusual. The media, according to Kleck, has blown up these irregular incidents to be something more than they are. In doing this, the media has prompted citizens and those affected by these few tragedies to take irrational action, which in the end does not do any good to prevent further tragedies of this nature.

          By backing up his arguments with facts, Kleck provides an educated insight into an otherwise convoluted mess of stories and outright lies surrounding school shootings. The most interesting point Kleck makes, I find, is when he points out “a casual consumer of the flood of news coverage of these shootings could easily draw the conclusion that violence in schools is a growing problem...” (Kleck, p. 211). I think the most important phrase here is casual consumer, that is, someone who watches the news on TV and takes it for what it is with no further research. ‘Casual consumers’ of news is a label that may be applied to a huge number of Canadians because really, who has the time to research into an interesting topic they saw on the news? Almost all Canadians who say they do not have this luxury of time. The only people who have the time (or make the time) are people like Gary Kleck, whose job it is to make sense of the crazy stories on the news. Would people be less hasty in slapping band-aid solutions on problems like school shootings if they took the time to educate themselves on the material? I think they would. Unfortunately, many people (including those who think up these ‘solutions’) do not have the time to do this research. So, should this responsibility fall to the media to start educating the masses on news stories, rather than blowing them wildly out of proportion?

Works Cited:

Kleck, Gary. "There Are no Lessons to be Learned From Littleton." Ackley, Katherine Anne. Perspectives on Contemporary Issues. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2008. 210-216.