Week 3

Documentary Proposal

“Are young people today portrayed as a generation to fear in contemporary society by the news in the media?”

Today’s apparent “Wasted Youth”

In this topic, we plan to explore the idea that if the news in the media continues to portray the youth of today as problematic, will they or have they already fulfilled the appointed role that is expected of them by society?
We will identify the circumstances in which this perception has been created, by reports of crime and violence amongst young people and how this influences the train of thought of the public and how it has altered their reactions to youths today.
An extract taken from an article at http://www.telegraph.com/ titled ‘Violent youth crime up a third’
A senior official at West London Youth Court, in Hammersmith, stares despondently at the growing stack of criminal files piled in front of him, each containing what he says are the stark details of a child's life going to waste. "The youth justice system simply cannot cope," he tells me. "We are being swamped. We are being asked to deal with a problem that is of society's making and all we seem to be able to do is apply a sticking plaster to it."
This implies that the situation is not being dealt with, it is just being covered up and thus getting worse.

* GANG-POLICE PROTECTION QUOTE taken from http://www.24dash.com/news/Central_Government/2007-05-23-Don-t-label-youth-groups-gangs-report
"Our own research on the experience of black young people in trouble with the law, called Just Justice(1), showed that none of the young people in the study trusted the authorities, and particularly the police, to protect them. Young people in the study overwhelmingly reported that they would rather turn to their friends and family to help them when in need, and to take justice into their own hands if crimes were committed against them." This seems to be an issue that needs to be dealt with as youth crime, especially serious cases seems to be a result of the fact that youths feel neglected by the criminal justice system and therefore feel they need to take matters into their own hands I.e. committing crimes of a vengeful nature.

In order of finding a conclusion to this popular debate, we plan to interview a series of public figures (a list is as follows) to find out their views on the topic at hand. We will ask them whether they believe news in the media is a dominant factor of portraying youths negatively and ask if they believe that youths are stereotyped in society primarily because of this. We will also interview a number of youths that feel they are affected by this misconception as they are the subject of the documentary and are therefore arguably the most important. There is no better way to find out about the youths of today, than asking them about themselves. Additionally, we will speak to other general members of the public that hold their own and find out whether they feel the media influences these ideas.