is the media giving the wrong aspect?

[bikeflip22]

well, this morning i woke up early and decided to do some channel surfing, only to come to a cartoon..

the setting was in the water, on a raft, with a girl trapped at the bottom of the ocean in a cage. The shark was obviously being aggresive, and actually flipped the raft over and came up and bit a huge whole in it, and dragged them out to sea. So, the mother saves the day by diving down w/ a tank and grabbing her daughter. They are then faced by 2 more sharks, she throws her tank off and swims to the surface with no tank, just a held breath from the tank...


i think some of the reasons people are so scared of sharks, and large fish, is because of how the media makes them out to be. Of course something like this COULD happen, however it is very unlikely...

maybe if the media cut down on showing the bad side of sharks, and maybe the good (cancer treatment), then it will put a stop to the abuse towards them both verbally and physically...

 

[Jedi]

If it bleeds, it leads.

"i think some of the reasons people are so scared of ________, is because of how the media makes ________ out to be. "

Talk about a universal observation. Just fill in the blank and you'll fit in to any interest group around the world. Complaints about the media are like **********s...everyones got one.

 

[Aqua Buoy]

Sharks are a convenient target... it's easy to make them look vicious, I mean they are top predators in the food chain (though they too get eat - ever see a killer whale snap a great white in two - very cool!!!).

Then there's the whole Jaws thing which doesn't help, and the media coverage of shark "attacks" which are probably all blown out of proportion.

Terms like "killing machine" don't help either and aren't entirely accurate - yes they're very very very efficient predatos, but doesn't mean that all they do is kill kill kill, they do spend time moving, migrating and mating.

I also believe it has a lot to do with ignorance, or lack of knowledge - which is always interesting when you get someone as you "aren't you afraid of sharks?" and they look confused when you tell them no.

But take anything in the media and it's either under-reported or blown out of proportion... it's us that have to figure out where we think the "truth" lies.