The Benetts Concept on Personalization, Dramatization - Essay Example

According to Ott and Mack (62), dramatization exaggerates the issues on the ground to portray a pre-desired goal most of which is a misrepresentation of facts. Where factual evidence might give the news item a different meaning, media houses fragment them and pay less attention to those findings. Normal scenes are intertwined with other dramatized scenes to create a near-true impression of the facts on the ground.

In the three news reports, Benett’s concept is evident. For Rome, the media portrays the offender as one suffering from a mental disorder and from a region that is full of hate. This is meant to give the audience the feeling that people from the region where the offender originates from are not worried about causing harm to others. For Libya, the fact that Khadafi’s adopted infant daughter died in the attack is fragmented to depict that the crime was well-planned and fully executed. Sri Lanka’s story is normalized with the provision of historical facts. This is mainly done because of the neutrality of their relationship with the US and therefore the media does not take sides.

In the current news coverage, the public continues to be fed news that makes them take desired sides and be in line with the government's opinions. A case in point is the current case of war and terror from ISIS. The media concentrates on passing information on the current state of affairs in Syria and rarely highlights the history of the violence. Much attention is also focused on their inhuman nature and how they mistreat women and treat them as spoils of war. By so doing, the general public takes sides with the government and supports the government’s initiative to bring peace to the region. South Africa is portrayed more neutrally since they have a relatively neutral relationship with the US.

Snowden case
Edward Snowden a former CIA agent exposed the secrets of the US spy operations to the media. As a result, the media portrayed him as a coward whose objective was to hurt the US. However, if Snowden exposed the operations of a rival country, he could be portrayed as a hero and the information he could provide could be exaggerated, emphasized,d and portrayed as vital information that would assist the US to know how to handle the rival country. If the information could be from a neutral country, the media would pay less attention to the exposed facts and could just portray the information in their neutral state without exaggeration or fragmentation so that the public could be free to make their judgment. Read More