Media's Exaggeration Of Homelessness In America

182 Words1 Pages
Homelessness. Goldberg draws attention to the homeless advertised on the nightly news were "sympathetic souls who told stories about how, because of hard times, they were temporarily down on their luck" (Goldberg 2001, 68) where compared to the homeless Goldberg described as "the ones on the sidewalk, by and large, were weirdos or drug addicts or schizophrenics" who "mumbled crazy things" (Goldberg 2001, 68). The exaggeration the media drew about a small fraction of the homeless in America was the ultimate call for support and compassion from watching audiences. Goldberg called this "prettifying of reality" (Goldberg 2001, 69). Following the media exaggeration for viewer sympathy, numbers of the homeless in America were rapidly becoming expansive: