Bowling for Columbine Essay
The American news broadcasters promote a culture of fear. The news has always played a huge part in influencing people. The accessibility of guns is also a large factor of people's fear, especially in such a gun-happy country as the U.S. Racism and the fear of things that are different can also contribute to the fear of people. In short, most of it all comes down to the media and how much they play something up, especially if it is a horror story.
The evening news can be a very powerful and dangerous weapon, because the rare stories with happy endings are usually blotted out by the horror stories of guns, murder, war, homicides, and other killings. In Canada, it is as easy to get a registered gun as it is in the U.S., but the Canadian evening news usually talks about happier stories than the U.S. evening news. This could be one of the reasons why Canada only has around 130 some homicides per year when the United States has an estimated 11,000. Maybe if the media didn’t make such a big deal out of the bad things that go on, such as the massacre at Columbine High School, people wouldn’t do half the things that they do, but they do it because they know that the evening news will give them five minutes of fame. After all, the guys who were accountable for all the lost and broken lives at Columbine had an entire 2 hour documentary done on them and what they did and are still talked about today, 11 years later.
The accessibility of guns is too easy for a culture with such a violent nature and reputation. For example, in the video Michael Moore walked into a gun store and was able to buy a gun and bullets without any trouble. And how did the guys that did the shooting at Columbine get their guns and bullets? They got them at the local K-Mart. In the video they asked a teenage boy to hide a bunch of weapons then asked him to put them on a table so people could see how many he had on him without anybody even noticing they were there. The U.S. has always had a love of guns and this is shown in all their cowboy and cops and robbers movies.
Throughout history, racism has always played a major role in people and their fear and often in violence. It’s probably because the media usually has a tendency to be racist, like in the TV series “Cops” they quite often chase down black people. In the documentary, Michael Moore showed a cartoon called South Park; it was about how hundreds of years ago people in England were being persecuted, so they left. When they found America they were afraid of the Indians because they were different, then they were afraid of the British, then it was the African Americans because they wanted their freedom, and slowly by slowly it’s gotten worse over the decades until people have chains on all the doors, keep guns under the bed, and bolt their gates shut. For the most part, it is the black people that get blamed for almost everything, like when one man killed his pregnant fiancée and blamed a black man. In the end, who will win? The black man or the man that is considered influential and a good citizen? Most likely the black man. The white guy probably blamed the black man because he was racist.
The American new broadcasters have caused this nation of fear by always showing bad things and blowing them out of proportion. With the H1N1 flu a few people died, but more people die each year of the ordinary flu. Except the media played up H1N1 so much it caused everyone to live in fear for weeks, afraid that they would contract this “deadly disease.” In conclusion, if the news didn’t make such a big deal out of everything, people would live in a lot less fear.
