“2 teens injured after a drive-by shooting”.

“Boy,17, fatally shot”.

“Man,18, charged in murder of girl,7”.

“36-year-old man shot to death” the morning news from WGN-TV I Chicago News reports. The news being the source of information for many Americans has become the go-to for morning and evening TV. “Hundreds of studies of the effects of TV violence on children and teenagers have found that children may become "immune" or numb to the horror of violence”

     I’ve become immune, too. Over the past few years, I’ve been shifting away from watching the news for one reason: it’s the same thing every day. It almost became a routine: wake up, get coffee, watch the news and listen to all the violence that happened in previous hours. Somebody died. Someone murdered someone else. Three stores were robbed at gunpoint. I’ve seen the numbness to the subject in the past year and a half with all the shootings and killings. Everybody else is acting like murder is a new thing for the world to see while I shrug it off and continue on my day because the same violent actions happened not even a week ago. I used to be mortified by the merciless killings by others. I would go talk to my mother, and I’d cry for the innocent death of a human. That’s rarely the case anymore. I see the news, understand the situation, then look for something else to do. I feel as though I am different than my peers simply because I’ve had it become so normal for me.

     I do not need to know why this is occurring because it’s very clear to anybody why this happens. For years the news controlled what the public knew, and they still do to this day. As time goes by they want the people to focus on the negatives of our daily lives. The news was once a godsend to the people. We could know the groundbreaking stories from around the world; now we just hear about the robbery on 83rd street. Even when there is no news to be reported they dig up some past story to enrage the crowds. Whether that be the drowned kid 4 years ago that is still missing, the stabbing victim with head trauma in a coma from months ago, or the murder victim who only now is being laid to rest after the autopsy was closed.

     For me, as for others, the day to day violence has become an expectation, the normal occurrence for daily American lives. The advantage of knowing what’s going on around you was once celebrated and applauded. “Journalism is”, Philip Graham, the co-owner of the Washington Post, has written, “the first rough draft of history.” But that boon comes at a price. As the author Joseph O’Connor once wrote that “Everything is the way the material is composed.” The news supplies the stuff of thought, but it also shapes the process of thought. What the news seems to be doing is building a biased set of beliefs for the public. The people now take in the information given to them by the news and create a sense of hatred for their country. Once I watched in horror like a fireman without a hose watching the flames rise. Now I pass by like an uninterested pedestrian.