Media Magic

At one point or another I do believe that every single one of us has had a negative view on poor people. That is the perfect example of how the media does tend to create negative and stereotypical thoughts in our minds. Many of us can grow past such thoughts and become more aware of actual facts and form better educated opinions on such topics. Throughout this reading I found some pretty interesting quotes that I believed helped me better understand and also was able to do some connections as well.

First quote: "In this essay, we will examine the way the mass media shapes how people think about each other and about the nature of our society."

So the first thing that came to my mind was the way that we see each other. When we see somebody poor or homeless we don't tend to feel bad anymore (some do but not all) and that is because of the media. For example, sometimes when my family and I go grocery shopping it sometimes tends to fall at the end of the month and the beginning of the new month. My parents absolutely hate it. We usually shop at our local price rite in Central Falls so most of the time we see shoppers with two or three carts filled with massive amounts of food (not all healthy) and three or four kids on the side. My parents never fail to form a negative opinions of such shoppers. That is only because media has made them think that all poor people are on welfare and are good for nothing human beings. Then once they have seen it on TV or read about it in some article it all seems to be true when you come across people who buy tons of food and their total is around $400 and just swipe the welfare card. I also believe that because we live in this city it is hard to not form negative opinions because it is a constant thing that we see everyday.

Second quote: "there is enough wealth in our nation to eliminate poverty if we chose to redistribute existing wealth or income."

If there is enough wealth to go around to eliminate poverty why don't we? Because we benefit from others misfortunes. It is sad to say but true. If we didn't have the working class nobody would take jobs that start at $5.40 an hour. Big companies need those people to get the job done and at a cheap wage. That is how they see profit. It just goes to show that we as a society need poor people to do things that middle/upper class would never do.

Third quote: " But the upper class and the middle class do not share the same interests or worries."

The universal thought that we are all middle class is ridiculous. If we were all middle class I guess we would have all the same worries but since we are not all middle class we don't. It make sense that upper class people think about stocks, profit, and their children going to private schools. They have the money, it makes sense that they use it well. It makes perfect sense that each class has different concerns if not I guess we wouldn't be discussing that class actually does matter. I think that the media conceals the poor so much for the better part of society. And what the media has showed us is a lot of negative aspects of the situation. That is why stereotypical thoughts exist because the media only shows us what they want us to see and not other stories so we don't feel bad, don't feel the need to give to the homeless, but yet again we see it everywhere.