TV news — is it informative or unnecessarily gruesome? Gibsons resident Michael Maser believes it’s the latter, and he’s determined to do something about it.
Maser, a 25-year educator with a past in print journalism, has started the Choose News campaign to reduce the amount of violence in broadcast media by petitioning the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB). Maser hopes to officially launch in coordination with Mental Health Week, May 4 to 10.
“My intention is to raise awareness through the educational communities, the religious communities, and certainly the health care community,” Maser said. “No one has said this issue is not valid. I’ve been talking it up for several years now.”
Maser has garnered support from local politicians and doctors, including Dr. Avraham Cohen, a professor in the Counselling Psychology program at City University in Vancouver.
“Children who are exposed to this news may grow up to be adults who may become the source of the news or citizens who have gone numb about such news,” Cohen said in a press release.
According to Maser, broadcast media outlets like the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States and the British Broadcasting Corporation deliver the news — bad or good — without dwelling on the violence that the Choose News campaign is targeting.
“They provide factual information without glorifying the gruesome details,” Maser told Coast Reporter. “I think that’s part of the business model for our leading broadcasters in Canada. Whether you’re talking about CBC or CTV, I think their business model is focused on delivering bad news.”
Now an educator, Maser was once a print journalist with Vancouver Sun where he says that he was acutely aware of the “if it bleeds, it leads” culture in media.
“It struck me at the time when I was going through journalism school. We brought the issue up and we role played some issues around it,” Maser said. “I thought, ‘so it’s no accident that bad news shows up in the newscast so frequently.’ I think it’s part of the business model, and it doesn’t have to be.”
As Dr. Cohen stated, the biggest concern for the Choose News campaign is the effects that violent news has on children who may be inadvertently exposed to it.
A study released by the McCreary Centre Society in 2014 found that stress and anxiety are the leading causes of mental health disorders in young people. Maser believes that violence in the media has something to do with this.
