The harsh role psychology plays in the media

I feel that sometimes the media can present psychology in a very harsh light. When psychology is involved in heavily televised court cases, it seems to be, almost a mockery of the actual field.
Let’s take for example, HLN. When they cover big cases, ones that are too good not to be televised, they usually have guests on the show, offering insight to the case. Its usual two types of people. It’s either a lawyer, who comes on the show as a “Legal Analyst”. Or it is a Psychologist; they come on the show to examine, the mental qualities of the person on trial.
When the psychologist comes on a show, like Nancy Grace, they typically give a play-by play, of what was probably going through the mind of the criminal at the time the crime happened. I think they might have good intentions when coming on the show. They want to flaunt their doctoral degree around, but really, at the end of the day, their opinion, is still an opinion, no matter what level of education is behind it. To the viewer at home, they’re like “duh, it is common sense this person is crazy;look at what they are on trial for”. I believe that when they come onto certain shows to offer commentary, the producers of that show, kind of want them to “dumb it down” to the audience: they just want the viewer to listen and agree. Typically, the audience does agree, because, since it came from a psychologist, it must be true, right?
And as far as the media presenting more diverse fields of Psychology, I don’t really feel that they do. When psychologists come on court room T.V., to give their medical opinion, it’s not really coming from a medical point of view. Abnormal psychology studies patterns of behavior, emotion and thought. While this serves as a good basis, it is still not definitive. It seems to be the only form of psychology, and the media wants us to understand. I feel that realm of psychology is overrated and much exploited. On the other hand, Biological psychology studies the physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior of humans. This form of psychology is underrated and under-valued in the media. In my (not-so) expert opinion, it is the key factor in determining why a particular individual, did a particular sort of thing. It is one thing to examine to look at the external factors, like the environment, of friends and family, but it is something totally different to pin-point the internal factors. Internal factors, being something like the make-up and chemistry of the individuals mind. This is a deeper explanation and we don’t see much of it in the media.
Another issue as to why the media is so tough on psychology, is because the media tends to “sensationalize” certain things. And no, this is NOT a fake news instance. Sensationalize means to present information about something, in a way that provokes public interest and excitement, at the expense of accuracy. Hence the term, “Media Frenzy”. Just take a look, for example, of the biggest trials, and the amount of viewers, each trial had. The trial of Jodi Arias went on for extremely long and painful 17-weeks. That trial alone had 500,000 viewers. Casey Anthony’s trial had 5.2 million viewers. And please don’t forget, the trial of O.J. Simpson, which had an astonishing amount of 100 million viewers. We as Americans “love to hate the bad guy”. So if the media has a “sacrifice they can give to us for ratings, they will do just that. Just look at Jodi Arias case. The prosecutions Psychologist, Dr. Janeen Demarte, described Jodi Arias, as “an extremely jealous stalker with border-line personality disorder”. And something about that, just made us eat that up. We agreed with that and endorsed it. Media outlets like HLN & CNN “sensationalized” it, and we feel right into it. The media had the viewer believing, that we knew this girl, and we crucified her. So the verdict for me is that the media DOESN”T really present psychological information in a sober, calm, and matter-of-fact way. They bring the drama, and amplify it more than they should.
“The biases the media has are...about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover”.
-Al Franken
White House Senator