Background
Currently, 88% of articles about young people are negative. However, numerous surveys into the issue have shown that the majority of young people are good. For example, Frontier Youth Trust, in research for its "labels r 4 jars not young people" campaign, found that the majority of adults overestimate teenage pregnancy rates and youth crime, despite the fact that the majority said they had not been intimidated by young people in the past year. This view was informed by the media in 61% of cases, while only 8% said they had regular contact with young people.
The British Youth Council's "Respect?" campaign found that 90% of young people denounce anti-social behaviour and 98% felt that the media portrayed them as antisocial, which 80% believed made older generations respect them less.
The Prince's Trust found that less than 10% of young people carry knives, take drugs or join gangs.
The reasoning behind campaigning to improve the images of young people in the media is therefore simple: young people are being portrayed unfairly and inaccurately, and this is having a damaging effect on community cohesion, where old fear young, and young mistrust old.
Read more about this topic: See The Good Behind The Hood
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)