Debunking Media Violence - Formal

I found that this editorial was a bit shorter than the first essay but was longer than the second. I also found this editorial to be a lot more interesting than the other two essays. When I was reading the other two I was always wondering how much more I had to read, how much longer I had to read, etc. Another words I wanted the essays to be over as soon as possible, but wit this editorial I wasn’t too worried about the length or how long it would take me to finish reading it. This article was very interesting.

I also liked how the author of this article was very organized and new exactly what he or she was talking about. For the first half of the editorial the author talked about how some experts and researches said that the violence in young children was directly related to the violence that they see in the media. Even though I don’t agree with this the author had some good points and some good points, to back up this opinion, and was very persuasive. For example he/she says “Research has proven that media violence has the following effects: increased aggressiveness and appetite for more violence; increased fearfulness and a lack of trust; and increased desensitization to violence and the victims of violence.” The author also has a lot of hard evidence and facts from big time people and organizations which is really good. The author also has a lot of comparisons between around 20-30 years ago to now, and how everything has changed. In the second part of this essay he talks about how the media has no affect on the violence from children or teens. He/she transitions between the two arguments very well, and makes it very clear he/she is switching from one argument to another. I think that was very effective, and pulling off a good transition can sometimes be very difficult. The majority of this editorial had to do with how violence in the media has a very trivial effect on the violence of teens. So I believe this is the side that the author supported. I thought it was effective how the author started out some of his paragraphs with rhetorical questions because it really gets the reader thinking.

This editorial I found was a lot more formal than the Media Violence Formal Essay, simply because it just seemed a lot more serious and well constructed than the other one. The author wrote in third person throughout the entire essay and really stated his points strongly with strong facts and statistics. I noticed that the author used passive voice throughout this editorial. The author surprisingly avoided using colloquial words and expressions like (kids, guy, awesome, a lot, etc.). For example instead of using kids he used children, and instead of using the word “awesome” like an informal editorial would he used wonderful which sounds a lot more sophisticated. And like all formal editorials/essays the author avoided contractions.