Quote Originally Posted by Dr Unne
I work for some people doing a psychological study of violent teenage criminals. The overall crime rate for high school aged people is at a 30 year low right now. My boss says that the "teenage crime epidemic" and "school safety epidemic" is entirely invented by the media, or rather by people's perception of the media. This is a non-issue. This is an example of something no one needs to hear about. People lack the perspective to handle or even understand this kind of news.
Barry Glassner, the author of Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things (which was the basis for the documentary Bowling for Columbine) is a Professor of Sociology at my school and he gave us a lecture a few weeks ago on this very issue.

Basically, while all the statistics show that school violence has been on a steady decline in the last few decades, the media jumps on these isolated incidents in order to claim that there is an epidemic of teenage violence.

I do believe that the media makes waaaay too big a deal about this "epidemic" of school violence. BUT, I disagree with the idea that the media shouldn't report this at all.

Of course we need to hear about these things and yes it is an issue. What the media needs to stop doing is misdirecting the public's attention to this idea of killer teenagers and instead focus on the real issues like gun control.

The epidemic is a fabrication, but something is obviously wrong when a kid (who had access to THREE guns!) goes on a shooting rampage.