ETHICAL ISSUES IN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY

Alternative subcultures and discrimination towards these subcultures.

ALTERNATIVE SUBCULTURES

One of the ethical issues In the media industry is the way someone looks or dresses is portrayed. Different subcultures such as Goths, emos, punks etc, have been portrayed in the media as being bad, rebellious people who dress like this to go against what other people decide to do, and that they are all being made to do this by the devil.

GOTHSA lot of bad things have been said over the years in the media about Goths and this is mostly because people are afraid or don’t understand what the gothic subculture is about. Being part of the gothic subculture myself, people around you expect you too do certain things, they think that you sit in your room all day in the dark being depressed, listening to music and wear black everyday, but that isn’t what it is about, goths have different reasons for being part of the subculture, my reason is I like the music and the clothing, this doesn’t make me or any other Goth or anyone who is part of a subculture less of a person than you are, we just dress differently and have other interested than you might do. The goth scene first came about in the late 1970’s early 1980’s when punk was about and bands like, joy division, Bauhaus, the cure, sisters of mercy, Christian death, and other bands came about starting the gothic music scene. This is a link to a video on youtube explaining to people what goth is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIrkXyIGFyw

SOPHIE LANCASTER

COLUMBINE SHOOTING

The columbine high school massacre happened on April 20th 1999. Eric harris and dylan klebold killed 12 students and one teacher, the media portraid them as bully victims and that they had a reason to do this. The goth subculture were blamed for this , because the shooters were dressed in all black so the media had blamed the music and the films they listened to.

MARILYN MANSON

Shortly after the columbine shooting marilyn manson got a lot of blame for the shooting because the media had blamed his controversial music and because of the way he dresses so they pointed the blame to him. He was then threatened daily by people calling him a devil worshipper and saying they were going to kill him because those two boys killed there fellow students, it was later discovered that the boys weren’t goths or fans of his music, causing the media to stop harrasing him.

WEST MEMPHIS THREE

Another case that caused a lot of controversy is the west memphis three case, on may 5 1993 three 8 years old boys went missing, Stevie branch, Michael moore, and Christopher byers . The next day the police found them dead in the woods. After investigating for a month and not being able to find leads, 3 teenage boys were arrested for the murders.

WEST MEMPHIS THREE

Damien echols, jessie misskelley and jason baldwin were arrested in 1993 for the murders of three eight year old boys, but after serving were released after taking an Alford plea because they were wrongfully convicted of the murders.