Misrepresentation is a serious matter that should not be intenionally done to get viewers attention; however, CBS 2 did it when interviewing a 4 year old child concerning guns! Misrepresentation in general, especially on this topic, is wrong on so many levels because miscommunication can lead to bad results. Altering the truth will never be seen as a light subject. This news station did this intentionally and like it or not, created a whole different problem in addition to just airing the wrong footage.The media in general define reality because they are capable of manipulating stories by shaping them and editing them (Writing, Politics, Power), and this story was no exception. The edited version of the 4 year old "wanting a gun" helps associate these negative actions to African American, children, and guns. Maybe that was not CBS 2's intention, but by framing the child's words as so, it supported and reinforced what people like to call a stereotype. As a result, the video evoked several different means to the same event (Writing, Politics, Power). This misconception can cause alot of damage to people of this race because this can form some link between African Americans and guns. If CBS 2 continuously misrepresented African Americans or even children of this age, it would create this frame associating them with guns like mentioned by Lakoff's rules of framing (Rule #2). Even through small stories, such as this one, new stations should realize that the everlasting effective will impact people. The media is supposed to "mirror society" (Writting, Politics, Power) and by airing this mis representation of a 4 year old African American boy, people will view it as "reality".
Although the editing done by CBS 2 looks obvious, viewers may have believed the clip and may consider it true. By re-framing the story, the news station have established a different outlook on children. Even the newscasters at the end of the clip state how horrified they were, but sadly, we should be the ones horrified of them because they misled the audience to think that this child could think like that. CBS 2 created a whole different story when they re-framed the videoclip. The news was concentrated around a drive by shooting that injuried two teenagers; however, when they interviewed this small child, they thought that they could make the story a little bit more interesting by re-framing what was actually said. By doing this, they captured the attention of their auidence in a fearful matter because it makes us believe that our future generations, that are as little as four years old, have ideas of owning guns. Like I've stated before, these stories can re-frame views on people and by evoking them, it can establish that certain frame that will be kept. The media has the power, this capablity of structuring stories and this station knew that. As for the orginal story, audiences that viewed the news created a certain image that the gunmen must have been African Americans because even though the evidence was not given to be African Americans, it was socially produced. This may have not been the case for every viewer, but the hard proof that the gunmen were not identified and having a young African American child "approve" of guns in matter that showed admiration instead of fear, is hard to deny. Uneditting versions help fight these negative notions towards certain groups or certain age groups by revealing, in this case, the truth that the child had orginally stated.
CBS 2 could have produced a story that even though had a tragic base to it, focused also on the goodness of children and how they are capable of realizing how bad this situation was. If I were the reporter I would have stressed on this issue of how the children see these actions because this creates some sort of relief in us all to know that even through troubled times, we can count that "our future" will no the difference between right and wrong.
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