For years, mass media in the US have been cashing in on violence. TV networks and movie studios have been repeatedly criticized for filling their productions with blood and bullets and excessively violent imagery. They routinely present violence as a solution to all problems. The numerous fatal school shootings over the years speak volumes about the influence of violent imagery on impressionable or disturbed youngsters.
The latest comprehensive data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 5.4 percent of high school students carried a weapon, such as gun or knife, on school property on one or more days in the 30 days before the survey, and 7.4 percent reported being threatened or injured with a weapon one or more times in the 12 months before the survey.
This is not to say violence on the screen is the sole cause of violence in society or that watching violence makes all youngsters violent. However, long-term exposure to such violence certainly affects the way youngsters think, behave and view the world around them.
Neither should the China-as-adversary assumption be exercised. Clearly the kid is repeating the poisonous anti-China rhetoric that he hears around him, not least from the media.
Given that, it was not much of a surprise when a girl in the same segment of the Kimmel show warned that Chinese people would retaliate in her response to Kimmel's follow-up question of whether they should allow the Chinese to live, two others countered that the Chinese would all be killed first. Again, the children do not know any better, but the adults should.
Despite all the friendly rhetoric exchanged between the two countries, the US media is always talking about a "China threat" and making negative comments about China, which the majority in the US now believe is challenging the US' long-held hegemony. They are the messengers of distrust and hostility, prejudicing the younger generation against other races and countries.
The demonstrations by the Chinese communities in the US should sound the alarm that the culture extending far beyond the walls of ABC is poisoning innocent minds with hate.
The author is a writer with China Daily. gaozhuyuan@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 11/14/2013 page8)
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