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Violence, Video Games And Donahue
nsda's deviant writes: "Salon is running an article written by Henry Jenkins, the director of MIT's new comparative media studies program. His article on Salon details blow-by-blow the shrewd tactics of cable TV's nightly debate programs like O'Reilly, Connie Chung, Cross Fire and of course the return of Donnahue. It also sheds lights on mass media's promotion of violence as ratings excitment and actively publicizing violence (ala Grand Theft Auto 3) for more ratings / controversy. The debate over video game violence has been a frequent topic on /. but this gives it quite a different twist. My favorite quote is 'those GTA3 clips seemed a whole lot more bloody when he (Donahue) was watching them before the show.'"
From my experience you can get very good news from the BBC.
They have a very international focus, as opposed to many news shows that are heavily-biased towards their country of origin.
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
The BBC does a fair job, being British in America I've come to regard the BBC with something approaching reverance. where as living there I thought it biased, opinionated rubbish.
I would reccommend either the cable channel BBC America or the world service streamed across the net. The WS in particular is very cool. As a last resort get a short wave radio.
Of the Amercian news I tend towards CNN with the sound turned off. Local news is dire and national news about the same.
It's unfortunate that Jenkins' ideas weren't given air, but worse is that they probably never will, as long as video games are "for kids."
His ideas actually were given air. In 1999 there were Senate hearings in Washington about the marketing of violence to children. This came after Columbine and the school shootings back then. Jenkin's was part of a panel of four people at those hearings, and said a lot of the same types of things you read in this piece. After the Senete heard what he and the other three on the panel had to say, the hearings were basically dropped, and not much came out of them.
Since when was Donahue conservative? He's the liberal poster-boy in most people's books.