Annotation 3

The Distortion of Televised Reports on Teenage Crimes in Taiwan

    In the essay, the author, Dr. 蘇蘅, explores how Taiwan's televised news and newspapers report teenage crimes and the effects of their ways to represent teenage crimes. With statistics from different television news stations and newspapers, he finds out a couple of characteristics in their reports of  teenage crimes: Firstly, both of them prefer to report the teenage violence crime which is not the highest ration of teenage criminal types according to the statistics from Ministry of Justice because they think that the violence crime can appeal to the viewers. Secondly,  the televised reports does not trace the  further development of the case although they value the occurrence of the teenage crime and the moment of arresting than the newspapers does. Thirdly, their sources of the teenage crimes highly depend on the police and the authorities. In conclusion, he points out that the televised reports is especially able to distort the viewers' perception about teenage crimes  because of not only the prejudiced information of the teenage crimes from the police but also the use of the dramatic and exaggerated explanation in the reports for attracting the audience.
    That discourse can be an interpretation of the televised violence news' effect on the potential school bullying in Taiwan. It goes without saying that Taiwan's TV news like to report the criminal news. To appeal more viewers in the short broadcasting time, it tends to choose the more severe cases such as murder or injury and overstate the context of the teenage crimes but lacks the profound reports. With that representative way, the teenage viewers who watch those reports can possibly think the reports entertaining even imitate those behaviors in school like threatening  or harming other weak classmates which result in the happening of bullying. Thus, the way of Taiwan's televised news representing the teenage crimes can make the effect of inciting school bullying instead of  transmit the viewers the positive message of admonishing the similar circumstances to reoccur.

蘇蘅 (2002).  新聞裡的罪與罰--報紙與電視新聞如何再現青少年犯罪 Retrieved January 9, 2009, from NCCU Institutional  Repository Website: http://dspace2.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/28089