I wrote this in 2005 for an English course in college. I was limited to books that I could find in the university’s library, but it gets the point across I think.

I am a youth and a representative of my generation. I don’t really wish to be the latter, but I am by default simply because of the former. My decisions and my actions make me a statistic whether I choose to better my life or throw it away. For example, by becoming a college student, I have become part of that statistic, but if I chose to steal car stereos for a living, then I have become a crime statistic. I also play violent video games, watch movies that contain violence, and listen to hard rock and metal music (which is often thought of as “angry” music by those who don’t identify with it). According to certain statistics, this makes me a potential threat to my fellow classmates because, supposedly, I have been influenced by these forms of media to the point where I am almost completely devoid of morality and the ability to comprehend the difference between fiction and reality. Said statistics, however, are skewed by personal opinions and political agendas, and, therefore, are far from the actual truth of the matter.

While it is possible to argue in some cases that descriptions and images of brutality have had an impact on violent individuals, these cases are a small minority of a much bigger picture. Just because I grew up on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “He-Man” doesn’t mean I feel the urge to solve my everyday problems with a karate chop or a broadsword, and I’ve actually grown up to be a very non-violent person. The truth of the matter is that many statistics are broad generalizations created simply to sell books, boost ratings, and push the blame off on the things the media hates by making them appear as if they are a threat to our safety and way of life. In this essay, I will expose the true danger of the media. The threat is not to our children, but to the thought process of any “concerned” citizen who thinks they know why kids do what they sometimes, tragically, will do.

Throughout my research of the topic, I came across a countless number of books that listed a countless number of studies that attempted to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that violent images in media cause children to be more aggressive and desensitized to violence. In Screening Violence, Prince laces his opening argument with statistics such as the following:

“A meta analysis of 217 studies on television violence conducted between 1957 and 1990 found a consistent and significant correlation between viewing violent television and aggressive or anti-social behavior.”

The book’s essays go on to attack many individual films for their fictional depictions of violence, scattering small statistics from studies like the one quoted above to “confirm” his hypothesis. Yet a book published just a year before Screening Violence entitled Youth Violence provides the findings hundreds of studies that hoped to uncover the answer to why children commit violent acts, and there is only a very tiny mention of media violence as a contributor. Tested factors included population indicators, biological factors, psychological characteristics, family factors, school factors, peer factors, and situational factors, with “media influences” tossed on the very bottom amongst the “macrocontextual factors.”

Yet Madeline Levine, a psychologist who authored the book Viewing Violence, claims in her book that media severely affects the brain of a developing child, and she proceeds to go through each stage of the brain’s development, explaining how television shows and movies she has seen encourage children to grow up with incorrect notions about life. She neglects to note how her own reasoning capabilities are decades ahead of any developing child and her ability to draw meaningful connections from media may be a tad more advanced, but this prejudice goes without mention. While the essayists in Screening Violence and Ms. Levine are excellent at providing examples of graphic scenes in the media that they deem “offensive” or “inappropriate,” they fail to provide specific examples of children who were affected by this violence so dramatically that they went out and performed similar actions themselves. In fact, while Screening Violence at least makes some mention of scientific studies, Viewing Violence is almost all assumption on the part of a woman who may have a PHD, but provides very little evidence of her theories in practice.

Many authors write so convincingly, however, that it is difficult for many readers to decipher between what is fact and what is merely opinion, and many television programs such as “Dateline” and “20/20” often piece together their “special investigative reports” the same way, practically scaring alarmed parents into tuning in (with catchphrases like, “Are your children dead already? Find out at nine!”) and watching interviews with biased and opinionated guests whose words are twisted into “proof” that there is a strong connection between media violence and children’s violent tendencies. This fictional violence must be heavily censored or eliminated completely “for the safety of our children,” they claim. Probably the best example of this was the media frenzy that spawned from the horrific actions of two high school students in Littleton, Colorado.

On April 20th, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris entered Columbine High School armed with guns and homemade bombs, murdering fourteen students, one teacher, and injuring many others before taking their own lives. For the next few months, every other important news story in the country was put on the back burner to cover this tragedy, and television viewers and periodical readers alike couldn’t escape the countless retellings of the school shooting. This may not have been so bad if the actual facts were presented to the public in the first place, but with the local and FBI investigations taking months, which turned into years, the media decided to draw its own conclusions about who these two troubled teens were, what exactly it was that they did that day, and, most importantly, why they did it. All kinds of insane rumors began being passed off as facts, and today, six years later, these lies remain just as ingrained in the minds of the public as they were then. I have listed many of these misconceptions below, along with the true story afterwards.

1. Harris and Klebold had a hit list and targeted jocks, Christians, and racial minorities.
Harris kept a journal, a website, and made videos explaining his twisted point of view. In all these sources, he expresses an indiscriminate hate for everyone. He targets everyone from racists to jocks to the rich to the poor to “Star Wars nerds” in his rantings. He hated whites just as much as he hated blacks. They expected their bombs to wipe out the majority of students haphazardly, especially in the cafeteria, but when they did not go off as expected, the pair began randomly shooting people as they went. If they really had these specific targets, such as the jocks, why did they choose to go to the library instead of the gym, where many of the athletes would be? Why did only one black student die out of many that attended the school? Police did later recover a hit list written by Harris, which included girls who would not date him, students that angered him, and celebrity targets like Tiger Woods, but no one on this list was actually murdered, particularly any famous golfers.

2. They were members of the Trench Coat Mafia and wore trench coats to school every day.
A small group of Columbine students called the Trench Coat Mafia had a feud with a band of jocks in 1999, but most members of this group graduated almost a year before the shooting. Klebold and Harris were not affiliated with the group, nor did they appear in the 1998 yearbook picture where all of the members are shown. Only Klebold was seen wearing a trench coat a few times to school, and the main reasons these coats were worn the day of the shooting were to conceal their weapons across the campus without causing alarm and to carry multiple firearms at one time.

3. The two boys were outcasts who preferred to be alone and listen to music with “violent” lyrics like Marilyn Manson. They were “goths” who wore black clothes and rarely associated with their parents.
Klebold and Harris were not the most popular kids in school, but they were certainly more accepted than many of their classmates. They had a close circle of friends, partied often, and had girlfriends on and off. Harris often posted on his website that he hated the “goth” crowd and especially hated Marilyn Manson and his music. Harris specifically wrote that he enjoyed techno music, a far stretch from the hard rock bands and rap groups that are often attacked in the media for their lyrics, considering most techno has no words at all. Harris also wrote that he took pleasure in lying to people, his parents in particular. Both boys put on a façade for their parents, who had little insight into their innermost thoughts and plans until it was far too late.

4. One of their victims was asked by Klebold if she believed in god. When she replied, “Yes,” she was executed.
Cassie Bernall was credited as saying this, and her mother went on to write a bestselling book, She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall, about her “martyrdom,” but it has been confirmed by two eyewitnesses that this exchange never occurred. Both Bernall and Emily Wyant were hiding under tables across from each other. Emily watched as Cassie was shot, without exchanging a word with Klebold. Another girl, Valeen Schnurr, was lying down injured when one of the killers approached her and asked if she believed in god. She replied, “Yes,” to which he asked, “Why?” She said, “Because I believe and my parents brought me up that way.” He reloaded his gun and walked away. Luckily, Schnurr crawled away to safety, but her story was confused with Bernall’s and elaborated upon. The rest became media history.

So why did I explain these misconceptions in such detail? Because Columbine is one of the most common names thrown around in this debate, yet most people debating it aren’t even aware of the real facts. These facts do not justify their dreadful acts in any way, nor do I condone their reprehensible behavior, but it does force one to question where reporters and journalists are getting their information. Are they making it up? Are they reporting rumors and hearsay as if they were fact? Or are they hoping to take full advantage of a catastrophic situation that has the attention of most parents nationwide by slyly inserting their own conservative views?

By scaring parents into thinking that Harris and Klebold were highly influenced by violent video games, movies, and music, they will, in turn, shelter their children from these things and join the fight for censorship. Think this is a stretch? One of the main musical artists who is often attacked by conservative media for his controversial lyrics and stage show is Marilyn Manson, who, as I mentioned earlier, the shooters despised. Yet ABC’s “20/20” aired a report the day after the shooting that linked the killers to Satanism, cults, goths, and, of course, Manson’s music.

The FBI’s team of psychologists and special agents came to the conclusion long ago that Klebold was a suicidal depressive and Harris was a psychopath, in the strict psychiatric sense of the term – he was aware of his actions, had a superiority complex, was a compulsive liar, and was completely cold with a total lack of remorse. These severe mental problems were not discussed on television screens across the country, however. Parents were not cautioned to watch out for any warning signs. They were simply told to make their children stop watching Quentin Tarantino films and playing the video game “Doom.” If they were truly concerned about the mental stability of children, the media would have at least attempted to mention these significant details, but I can only assume that they were too wrapped up in their own selfish agendas to worry about silly little things like honest journalism.

And people like Cassie Bernall’s mother take this despicable tactic to the extreme by using the death of her daughter to promote her own religious beliefs while vilifying “non-believers.” Some may disagree and say that she simply wrote the book to honor her daughter and carry on her “inspirational” message, but if this were so, then why wasn’t the book based on hard evidence, like the eyewitness accounts of everyone in the room, and not simply overblown rumors created by Christian-biased media that she simply embellished on? It’s understandable for a grieving mother to want to believe such a story to be true, but to base the story of her death on a blatant falsehood is more disrespectful to Cassie’s memory than anything the shooters could have done. This also paints Harris and Klebold as godless killers motivated by a burning hatred for Christians, which does nothing but fan the discrimination against atheists, agnostics, and religions such as Wicca in this country and further prove that there is a prejudiced agenda present. Blind faith certainly has its sway, however, as does the media’s underlying “values,” for lack of a better term.

Polls as recent as 1997 confirm that 70% of Americans believe that television causes people to behave violently on occasion, a 12% increase from the people who believed this in 1989. A U.S. News & World Report poll found that 92% of Americans think television contributes to violence, 65% also believing that television has a negative influence on American life. These numbers come from a fascinating book called On Media Violence by W. James Potter, who writes:

“Even though most people believe that media violence is harming others and society in general, they do not feel they personally are being affected…People know that others are committing violent acts, but they also know that they personally have never committed any atrocities. The problem with this reasoning is that people equate effects with atrocities. Media violence has many different effects. A person can be profoundly influenced by exposure to media violence without ever having committed a violent crime.”

The truth at the very heart of this matter is that people are always looking for a scapegoat. When serious problems plague society, like that of violent behavior in children, people tend to blame whatever seems to most obviously be the culprit, and movies, video games, and music are easy targets because they may contain the very images we hope to never see in real life. Life will teach you rather quickly, however, that there is no such thing as an easy answer, and not one, two, or even a dozen things can be blamed for an occurrence because there are often multiple answers to a single, yet multifaceted, question. Each of these violent cases is an individual case, and because each person involved is unique, so, too, will their reasons be. While it may be argued that images of violence could act as a catalyst for those who are already inclined to be violent, this still does not nullify the freedom of speech (especially for those who obey the law), nor does it prove that if these images suddenly disappeared, so would people’s motivation to perform acts of violence. You may read about them daily in your newspaper, but keep in mind that these kids are the exceptions, not accurate representations of the majority. So the next time you hear someone talking about “the downfall of society,” be sure to remind them that their generation played bloody games of cowboys and Indians and they came out just fine.

Sources:

Cullen, Dave. “Columbine Report Released.” Salon. 16 May. 2000. 10 Apr. 2005 (http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2000/05/16/columbine/index.html).

Cullen, Dave. “The Depressive and the Psychopath.” Slate. 20 Apr. 2004. 10 Apr. 2005 (http://slate.msn.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2099203).

Cullen, Dave. “Goodbye, Cruel World.” Salon. 14 Dec. 1999. 10 Apr. 2005 (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/12/14/videos).

Cullen, Dave. “Inside the Columbine High Investigation.” Salon. 23 Sept. 1999. 10 Apr. 2005 (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/23/columbine).

Cullen, Dave. “Who Said “Yes”?.” Salon. 30 Sept. 1999. 10 Apr. 2005 (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/30/bernall).

Goldstein, Jeffrey H., ed. Why We Watch: The Attractions of Violent Entertainment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Jenson, Jeffrey, and Matthew O. Howard, ed. Youth Violence: Current Research and Recent Practice Innovations. Washington, DC: NASW Press, 1999.

Levine, Madeline. Viewing Violence. New York: Bantam Doubleday Publishing Group, Inc., 1996.

Potter, W. James. On Media Violence. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 1999.

Prince, Stephen, ed. Screening Violence. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Valdivia, Angharad N., ed. A Companion to Media Studies. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003.