Drawing on people’s emotions is what helps get readership and subscriptions up. No one wants to read about someone walking their dog and finding a cool leaf—that’s boring. People want to read something that gets their heartrate up, that gets them out of their day-to-day life, that gets them fired up. The top news stories are never about an old lady getting helped across the street, they’re stories of violence and crime and injustice. It draws people in, piques their interest, and helps the news company earn money. The articles we were presented in this module followed this line of yellow journalism where commonly held believes about the justice system were perpetuated and little more outside of this one-sided view was explored. Mental illness was a common thread through these pieces and in all of them, we were told what the police officer did, but not the civilian. How were these officers to know that these individuals were suffering from a mental illness? What exactly were they doing to promote such a reaction from the officers? These questions were left unanswered, …show more content…
Hill’s mental illness is also brought up, victimizing him even more. He is depicted as suffering from bipolar disorder. He was describes as having “never act(ing) aggressively or oddly before” () by a neighbor, but it is doubtful that when Mr. Hill was suffering from a depressant state, he had much interaction with the people living close by. He was obvious acting oddly since “workers at the rental office eventually called 911” (Fausset). It was doubtful that they knew he suffered from this disease, and it is highly unlikely that the officer who responded to the call was aware of this fact either. Mr. Hill was acting in a way to call attention to himself in a negative way, perhaps because of his illness, but it is not a logical discussion to bring up as it is impossible to know if the officer took this in to account when responding, or if he was just responding to the actions being