Scandals are useful because they focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be

There are several ways to focus people's attention on problems. Scandal being a controversial approach has an ambiguous result. Though it definitely focuses public's attention on problems, more often then not it fails to provide any resolution of the problem. Scandals are thus only occasional effective and limited in their approach; therefore i mostly disagree with the claim.

The first limitation of scandal is they are almost always fabricated and contrived. Rarely is there any logical reasoning or convincing evidences. Media plays a very important role in fabricating and spreading of such canards. Because of such scandal which are nothing more than atrocious lies concocted to increase the media's popularity, many times the good name of a reputed citizen is tarnished. The person falsely indicted person then has to suffer utmost amount of humiliation.He could even lose his vocation, family and stature in the society. For eg many would have heard of joseph jackson. He was an american baseball player. Wrongly accused of taking part in black sox scandal, he was banned from playing when he was at the apogee of his professional career. Years later it was proved that he was an innocent. Because of a baseless allegation his whole career was destroyed. This example demonstrates the detrimental effect a scandal can have.

Secondly even when the scandal is legitimate it can fail to serve it's real purpose. The scandal may even successfully shock and incite people to take actions yet most of the times no proper resolution is achieved. The main aim of the scandal is not to just focus people's attention on the problem rather it should help achieve better understanding of the issue, the causes and effects, and it should eventually lead to fixing the main issue. Howerver , almost always , it tends to distracts the attention from the main issue at hand and focuses on a specific part. Take the case of charles pornell, political leader. He at the pinnacle of his career got embroiled in a scandal. he was accused of perfidy and due to the scandal he was replaced from his own party. Because of the scandal all the works he did for the country as president were disregarded and the important causes that he fought for were undermined just because of the scandal. Consider another example, Indian premier league, a highly acclaimed tournament, was part of an scandal recently. In 2013, three cricketeers, part of the ipl, were arraigned for betting and spot-fixing. The scandal became highly popular due to it's association with top-list cricketers. In this case, though high amount of attention was drawn from the public, no conclusion regarding the scandal was achieved. The case is still going on in the court. One can see from such examples that the scandal fails to provide a answer to the crux problem and hence it is ineffectual.

On the contrary though sometimes scandals can help solve major issues of the nation. The watergate scandal is an exemplar of such scandals. The scandal exposed nixon and many high power officials who abused their power to enhance their political career. The scandal was successful because it forced nixon to resign and in turn helped the nation to rectify it's decadence. Owing to the scandal people became more concerned about the graft in the nation and as a consequence there were attempts to reform campaign funding and limit presidential power. Furthermore various laws such as ethics in government acts were also sanctioned. This examples shows that sometimes a scandal can have positive and far reaching implications.

After considering various aspects of the scandal , one can agree that though sometimes the scandal can enlighten the public and can lead to various beneficial reforms, most of the times the scandals are misleading and do not afford any resolution. Hence i mostly disagree with the claim ,that scandals are useful because they focus peoples attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could.