Transition Year students can win a week's work placement in The Irish Times. Send us your thoughts (200 words maximum) on a media-related topic.
Sarah-Jane Hillery, Teresian School, Stillorgan, Dublin
The movie-going public of today seems to be becoming more and more demanding, pressurising directors into making their creations more sensational. This has led to an increasing number of shocking and horrifying productions.
With all this unnecessary violence the youth of today are being subjected to, is it any surprise that many feel that young people today have no sense of right and wrong?
It also seems young people are getting less responsive to violent, outrageous scenes.
Armageddon, the blockbuster starring Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis, is quite shocking; director Jerry Bruckheimer presents us with the prospect of the end of the world. Though not a new idea, the way it is introduced is novel and believable.
I, like many 15-year-olds, was only slightly perturbed by this. My father, however, is still traumatised weeks after seeing the movie. Does this show that people of the younger generation have been subjected to so much that this does not seem disturbing to them? Is it just that we were so overcome by Ben Affleck's obvious allure that we were blinded to the rest?
Brian Hackett, Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare
My first experience of TnaG was in the Connemara Gaeltacht two summers ago - where the idea of kindness was allowing TnaG to be watched during tea. So it was in a sombre mood that I turned to watch, with surprise, Ole Ole, the Spanish football programme on the Irish language and cultural station. The next programme to grace the screen was European News as Bearla. (The mute button was quickly pressed.)
The next time I tuned in was last week, by mistake. At the time an "oldie" film was being shown as Bearla aris. It then occurred to me that TnaG since its founding has been going through a major identity crisis; it now shows films and programmes in English just to achieve ratings.
TnaG is an Irish-language station that should be broadcasting Irish-language programmes. The point, I thought, was to promote the Irish language and culture in the Irish home, not to be a third English-language station. And so we are left to guess what TnaG will broadcast next - cricket, perhaps?
Write to media scope by posting your comments to Newspaper in the Classroom, The Irish Times, 11-16 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, or faxing them to (01) 679 2789.
Be sure to include your name, address and school, plus phone numbers for home and school.
Or you can use the Internet and e-mail us at mediapage@irish-times.ie.
media scope is a weekly media studies page for use in schools. Group rates and a special worksheet service are available: FREEPHONE 1-800-798884 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.).
media scope is edited by Harry Browne.
