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Haley Glenn
CJ 1010-Fall
December 9, 2015
Dr. John Hill
Media and Discretion
The year 2015 has been one for many struggles for the United States, ranging
from a heightened amount of gun violence, police brutality, racial discrimination,
economy, and an overall decline in unity as a nation. That is a bold statement, but so is
saying that all policemen and justice officials are racist individuals. Unfortunately
though, that is a common theme to have been seen throughout this year and years prior.
There have been lists upon lists of innovations that have been created in the recent years
in media enhancements that can be viewed as blessings and curses. Police cameras have
also been upgraded and more often than not police are being required to wear them while
on duty. And some are even saying the police discretion is lessening less and less. But
who is to measure what is too much discretion, too much brutality, what is or is not
reported on the evening news? Is it that people are only focusing on the negative things
that they read, hear, and see, rather than the good that is going on in the world? Are
people forgetting that each individual is just that, their own individual, with their own
thoughts and morals? Rather than lumping every same professional together into the
same category. Is the respect for our authoritative figures who put on the uniform every
morning diminishing into almost anything? This is what I wanted to look at, seeing if
how the media is today makes an impact on police discretion and brutality. To see if all

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these things are all reaching new heights or if we, as a society, only want to focus on most
negative things rather than the positive.
What is considered media these days? It seems like there is a revolving door that
is consistently rotating new and improved version of different technological advances in
every day. One thing is for sure; there is never a lack of access to find out the news.
Whether that be from the internet, television, cell phones, work, emails, apps, radio,
social media, kindles, computers, tablets and many other forms of technology that have
become so easily accessible to our fingertips. According to Pew Research Center, in 2013
more than half of social networking sites have shared news articles and video while 46%
of those sites actually go in to discussion about it. (Anderson, PEW) Psychology
Professor Krystine Batcho of Lemoyne College, thinks that social media has impacted the
younger generation in both positive and negative ways. Positive in the ways of how the
internet can build a sense of community, with children being able to see different beliefs,
cultures, and people from all over the globe. She mentions that is negative for two major
reasons, where one is based on a fear and the other is based on how much access becomes
too much access. She states, I think there are a lot of fears of whats happening that
weve made interactions with other people too impersonal and a distancing phenomena is
taking place. (Batcho, Wash News) Speaking in regards to social media is taking out the
interpersonal interaction that takes place when an individual has an actual face-to-face
conversation with another. Taking that aspect out of the younger generations social world,
it can create dissention because as this generation grows up and gets older the fear is that
they will not be able to handle face-to-face confrontation. We can see that this fear is
pretty justified in the ways that this generations respect our law enforcement. An

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individual could get pulled over for something as simple as a burned out headlight, and
while the police are more than likely just pulling them over to let them know about the
headlight the driver tends to blow the encounter out of proportion. Taking to social media
once the exchange is over to complain how unfair it was that they received a fix-it ticket,
when in reality law enforcement is just doing their job. It is in that social media post
though where things start to domino into a bigger issue.
Once you post something on the Internet, it is there forever. There are no take
backs. So when an individual or media website posts an article or video people have
access to that one thing anytime they want and pretty much wherever they want. There
have been many studies where the happiness and positivity of individuals are measured
by how media affects those emotions. A lot of research has pointed to the underlying
theme that the more the negative the news is, the unhappier people are. My mother used
to work in an office where there were four different televisions in front of her with
different news stations playing all day long. One can only imagine how much negativity
and unfortunate things she saw on a daily basis. She has long since left that job and
comes home from work less agitated and stressed because she is not being subjected to
constant stream of negative news. This leads to the question of when is media too
excessive? And is having that much access to media a positive or negative thing? In my
personal opinion I believe there is such a thing as too much news, too much social
networking, too much media. If we were to take a step back and look at how much the
media controls, we would see that it functions in almost every aspect of our lives. It
controls what we see and when we see it, and how we perceive it. This is how perception
of good verses bad cops can be skewed. So how do what the media presents and the

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perception of law enforcement have to do with police discretion and police brutality? The
way law enforcement is viewed in our society today and they way citizens and police
interact with one another.
One of the largest misgivings with the media and reporting police-community
incidents is that not all facts are given for both sides of the story. A lot of people tend only
read the headline and skim the article, which can cause misinformation. Especially when
a lot of the time not all the information is provided. With so much access to news and
others opinions its hard to form ones own individual opinion. Tending the masses to
either join one side or the other, with no middle ground or a sensible mediation of both
sides. There also is no slowing down of how much information is given, it comes so
quickly and it is difficult for people to follow what is really going on, usually getting lost
in the more finer facts and missing the larger picture. Social media is a pulse, said
Jamie Roush, product evangelist at DigitalStakeout, which offers a cloud-based threat
intelligence platform. Its a real-time pipe that provides up-to-the-minute information,
and in many cases, up-to-the-second information related to whats actually happening.
(Roush, MCCMag) Though, not all media is bad. Yes, it does offer an over abundance of
reports at the time of incident causing an overload of information, but it also does aid law
enforcement. According to Rick Graham, retired chief of detectives for the Jacksonville,
Florida Sheriffs Office, Social media has become a very mainstream means of
communications to people and to communities, and law enforcement has had to figure a
way to adapt to the way people are communicating these days. (Graham, MMCMag)
Once law enforcement implements way to use media in investigations and way to inform

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the masses, they will be able to have a better control of how to handle the
during and after math of incidents that are instantly reported online.

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Works Cited
http://www.mccmag.com/Features/FeaturesDetails/FID/619
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civilliberties/report/2014/12/18/103578/4-ideas-that-could-begin-to-reform-the-criminaljustice-system-and-improve-police-community-relations/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshapingnews/
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/16/psychologist-social-media-causing-adistancing-phenomena-to-take-place/