So, I'm usually not into that kind of "sheeple-being-led-by-manipulated-news-thing", but what I just witnessed makes me really think about the effect of newspapers/articles on people that don't know a lot about a certain topic.
A few days ago, seven teenagers that have migrated into Germany a few months ago, tried to lit a homeless man on fire. Bystanders quickly put out the fire, leaving the man with just slight injuries.
Obviously, everyone (including me and the media) now hates the guts of every single one of the teenagers.
A German newspaper released an extensive analysis of the whole incident and also included a report from "experts" saying that most of today's teenagers have a somewhat barbaric and insensitive side towards certain moral standards.
That report instantly put the thought of me having that barbaric side as well into the head of my mom, which lead to an argument whether or not my generation is as bad as its sounds.
Now I obviously know a little more about my generation, which is kind of given seeing the fact that I almost exclusively hang around with kids my age.
The whole argument completely got out of hand, and now my mom is really worried about me since "some of the aspects of that report also fit on me" (e.g. arguing with lots of hard words, fighting with other teenagers).
She also thinks about talking to my father about the whole thing and even taking me to a therapist to see if I'm actually all that "barbaric".
I must say, I'm not really the most well-behaved teenager, but at least I keep up necessary things like school grades or general behavior.
I don't smoke, don't do hard drugs and drink only small amounts of alcohol.
I know that most of my decisions aren't really the greatest and my behavior could be way better.
And I also know that my mom has a lot more experience in life given the fact she is over 40 years older than me.
But seeing her being influenced so easily by such a short report kind of scares me what kind of other stuff she would believe when she reads it on a newspaper.
And its just not this incident that I'm basing this text on. I've seen her believe to the most ridiculous things about topics she doesn't know a lot about (e.g. Internet safety, hackers).
And all because the news said so.
She could've done just a little bit more research on her own and she would've found out that those reports were just a hoax.
Excuse my possible mistakes, I'm German and English isn't my first language.
TL;DR: My mom read a newspaper about barbaric teenagers and now thinks that every teenager - including me - has a somewhat barbaric side.
