Is Hate Speech in the Media Directly Affecting our Culture?

This weeks issue is about hate speech and whether it is affecting our culture. Hate speech can be interpreted a number of different ways, it all depends on who you ask. To me I see hate speech as any form of a degrading word used to describe a person in a negative way. With this definition of hate speech in mind it is quite obvious to see that the media uses hate speech a number of times everyday, which is then directly affecting our culture. With so much trust and dependence on the media it causes us to start and believe that what we see from them is how our culture should act. For example, newspapers will have headlines stating how terrible the Middle East is and how so many of our soldiers are being killed by extremists. Headlines like this then cause our society to believe that everyone from the Middle East is a terrorist, which is completely not true. Also, TV reality shows are all about bashing people with hate speech because it creates drama, which people love to watch. People then see these reality shows and try to mimic what they see, so their lives can have drama and excitement too. Pop culture icons are also a big part of why hate speech is affecting our culture. Lets take Kane West for example. He can say a lot of mean things like George Bush doesn't like black people but because we view Kanye as someone who is cool and important we as a society tend to let it slide and our youth then feels it is OK to act similarly. Hate speech has become an acceptable thing to do in our culture which 20 years ago was unheard of. It is sad to see that people will put other people down to make themselves feel better. Hopefully our culture realizes that hate speech is only making us worse and nothing is gained from it, so that we can change and make ourselves a culture of friendliness not hatred.