Bowling for Columbine: The Media's Falsity

Bowling for Columbine: The Media's Falsity

A common theme throughout Michael Moore's documentary, Bowling for Columbine, is the fact that the media is able to produce fallacies and fear in the American public. Michael Moore says, "American media is being pumped with fear". As Americans, we are bombarded with media everyday through televisions, magazines, and radio. But most of us do not stop to ponder its effects within our culture. Fear and violence are strongly correlated, and it is amazing how the media is able to play off that fear. Everyday you can not watch the news without being exposed to violence. The media however uses violence to invoke fear and then use that fear as a manipulating and influential power. For example, isn't it startling that most of the rapists, murderers, and criminals depicted on the news all seem to fit the same profile? Being a regular news watcher, I am appalled at the way the media has shaped our minds into believing that all law offenders seem to be tall dark African American males between the ages of 19-25!

It seems as though the nation has used this profile as a scapegoat for societal problems. Likewise, with the Columbine incident the media was desperately searching for someone or something to blame for the incident so that the public could rest a little easier. However, this desperate search for understanding usually creates more problems and not to mention stereotypes. In the case of the Columbine shooting, a favorite scapegoat among the media was Marilyn Manson. The media accused Manson as being an influential figure to the two high school shooters. To me this seemed like a cheap way out. Blaming this already controversial celebrity, was a quick answer that was easy to feed and be accepted by the American public. Manson's reaction to this was that the president was as much to blame as he was. But of course the media would never blame the president; the public would never buy it. Just like if a picture of a 50 year old white male in a nice suit was put up to describe a raging rapist or serial killer, the public would have a much harder time accepting this image over an image of a 20 year old African American male. This solidifies the idea that the media will take anything and spin it in a way that will make it much more "believable". They do not care if it they are feeding people lies or evoking terror, all they want is for you to