News and Current Affairs

Since the television was invented in 1924, news and current affairs programs have surly become one of our main media sources. With this in mind, reporters and stations alike are able to manipulate their audiences through a variety of techniques, to make them believe a representation of reality as opposed to the true fact. This is evident in the current affairs story “Video Game Violence” and the standard news story “Music Video Ban”. These similar stories both originated from Channel Nine and represent violence in society’s youth today, stating children are at risk if exposed to such material. Through a selection of techniques, the audience is lured into supporting the told story and agreeing with the general attitudes promoted.

Parents are the desired target audience of these stories which is evident through the mentioning of “children” and “youth”. Both news reports state that the media available to children today has proven to be devastating on the way they portray everyday life events. “Music Video Ban” is about a graphically violent music video produced by Perth band Beaverloop, creating outrage in society. “Video Game Violence” is a story about the effect of both suitable and non-suitable video games on children, supported by interviews and a psychiatric case study. In “Music Video Ban” to heighten the seriousness of this situation, the Columbine massacre is randomly mentioned and images of victims’ families are shown. This is to ‘help’ the viewer in understanding the attitude given, and reveals the possibilities of what can happen when access to violent media is too broad. In the “Video Game Violence” story, images of a devastated family from an incident involving a copy-cat murder are displayed. The ideas were taken from an R-rated Australian film known as “Bad Boy Bubby” and were used on Perth girl Natasha in her sleep by her 17 year old boyfriend. This is evidence enough that even the most unexpected can be influenced by meaningless entertainment media. The stories are shown to be warnings for parents around Australia to keep careful watch over what their children are exposed to and through graphic examples, express that failure is not an option.

The lead in on a report is very important for its ability to give first (and often last) impressions. This consists of the first few sentences (often containing connative terms) spoken to introduce