Why Are Young People so Badly Portrayed by the Media

834 Words4 Pages
Why are young people so badly portrayed by the media? When it comes to young people, bad news is good news for newspapers. If you were one of the hundreds of thousands of young people waiting for exam results over the summer, you'll know exactly what I mean by this. You couldn't but help notice the headlines at the end of August- "Exams are getting easier", "A Level papers easier than O Levels". In a few short words, the status and value of school exams, not to mention the effort put in by young people across the UK, had been totally undermined. If GCSE students have been reading the "dumbing down" comments, who knows how many may have changed their mind and abandoned their education. Lets face it, who wants to take on two years worth of work to have their efforts so easily dismissed by statistics? The negative way in which the press reports on exams is sadly something we've just come to expect. But what a lot of young people don't realise is that it's not just education where our achievements are diminished by the media. Just a few weeks ago the newspapers were filled with reports on the "shameful state of the nation's teenagers" - "our 15 year-old girls lead the world in boozing, obesity and taking drugs" claimed one tabloid. In 500 words the journalist writing the piece managed to convince the newspaper's readers that all teenage girls in Britain were overweight, slobs, who spent hours slumped in front of the television drinking Alco pops and smoking drugs. The two case studies putting across a young person's perspective on the issue were only worthy of a small box in the corner, overshadowed by the bold headline. But this kind of reporting is not new. In the past some newspapers have even gone so far as asking their readers to "shop a yob". Almost all of the publicity that the media gives to young people is negative, And when it comes to young
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