Tv Not to Blame

In his essay "Stop Blaming Kids and TV," Mike Males argue that media and TV are being blamed for violent behavior in kids and young adult. He finds that violent behaviors tend to come from within the environment in which they grew up. He asserts that kids and teens tend to mimic the behavior of adults and that TV violence has little to do with violent behavior in them. Males has made a strong argument for why TV is not the blame for violence in youths by showing that violent behavior can be associated to real acts of violence.

Males begin argument by stating that the media are programming teenagers. He support this by saying "White House official lecture film, music, Internet, fashion, and pop-culture moguls and accuse them of programming kids to smoke, drink, shoot up, have sex, and kill." (280) He reports that institution have claimed that a child will see 200,000 act of violence on TV before they graduate high school. Males' feels that the institutional report do not to in account the number real violence acts kids will see during that same time spam. Males say, "There will be fifteen million cases of real violence in American homes grave enough to require hospital emergency treatment."(281) He support this with statistical reports by the Department of Health and Human Services in October 1996. He also goes to compare American teens with those of Japan and Europe who see the same acts of violence on TV and have a much lower rate of murder among teens. Further, Males compares crime rates among different cities and ethnic background. He states that since minorities murder rates are higher than that of Whites teens. He states that if TV is influencing violent crimes in Afro Americans and Latinos teens "Why doesn't have the same effect on white kids?"(281) that are expose to the same programming or "Are minorities inherently programmable?"(281) He adds that campaign put forth the ideal that television commercials influence kids minds. Further Males states that media analyst feel that kids are open to commercial