Has the Media Grown Up?

Outspoken, opinionated and never lost for words, Mark Kermode is the UK's leading film critic.  In his twice-weekly video blog he airs his personal views on the things that most fire him up about cinema and media  - and invites you to give your opinions.
In this particular clip, Kermode is reporting on media coverage of a recent court proceedings. The case involved a murder of a 17 year old youth whose death, the media accounted, was ‘inspired’ by a recent British horror film. The boy’s tragic death had been linked to this movie because the circumstances in which he had died bore similarities to a murder scene from the spoof horror film “Severance”. Phrases and words such a ‘gruesome re-creation’ and ‘ the idea for the murder came from...’ surfaced almost immediately the story broke in the press. Kermode smelled a media or moral panic on the horizon.
However, what Mark Kermode discovers is that a media panic did not ensue. He finds this quite interesting, especially given Britain’s past history with the so called ‘video nasties’ of the early 1990s. It has become, he says,  “ a tradition in the British press to blame horror movies for violent crimes....which has often led to increased censorship” (Kermode 2007) In fact in the case of the tragic death of toddler, James Bulger in 1993,  linked by the media to the horror movie, ‘Child’s Play 3”, Kermode tells us that the public outrage was so great it caused an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act that impacted heavily on movie censorship in the mid 1990s.
The lack of media panic about this tragic case is encouraging. Kermode suggests that possibly the media have grown up. Deciding that instead of  blaming this “genuinely hideous crime” on a horror movie they will treat this case on its merits. Perhaps, the media have decided to not exaggerate and distort the facts. Instead, the sideshow that is the panic surrounding the link to the film has subsided for now.  
Maybe the media is becoming more aware of the dangers they pose by heightening public concern. Perhaps the real story behind tragic crimes, and events of youth culture will be investigated more appropriately and accurately, without attention being diverted by these panics. As Henry Jenkins tells us  (Media Violence Debates, 2010)
"Media images may have given the perpetrators symbols to express their rage and frustration, but the media did not create the rage or generate their alienation. What sparked the violence was not something they saw on the internet or on television, not some song lyric or some sequence from a movie, but things that really happened to them... If we want to do something about the problem, we are better off focusing our attention on negative social experiences and not the symbols we use to talk about those experiences."


REFERENCES:

Kermode, M. (2007). Kermode Uncut: Video Nasties. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsZDhqTyQgw&feature=related accessed 12 October 2010

Media Violence Debates. (2010). Retrieved October 12, 2010, from Media Awareness Network: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/violence_debates.cfm