Why is it bad to be medieval lately?

The think the term "medieval" has been over-used lately by the media. In some very high profile world events, they have described recent massacres, poor living conditions, treatment of prisoners and other such horrible topics as "medieval" and it's giving us medievalists a bad name!

I bet the tendency of the media use the term medieval in a negative way started in 1994 when Pulp Fiction uttered the oft-quoted "go medieval" phrase into our virgin moviegoing ears.

Now, I think newscasters just like to say the word medieval because it usually means some blood was spilled, and that's NEWS. I read an awful lot of news online via blogs, websites and RSS feeds, and I tell you the trend is saddening.

Sure, there's still plenty of local news across the country about medieval festivals, school activity days, projects, and fund-raisers, archaeological finds, and eccentric rich guys.

But what grabs the most eyeballs are the big gory statements like:

"Three Men Involved in Medieval Brawl"

"A teenage girl terrorised a terminally-ill man in the final weeks of his life as she laid 'medieval siege' to her neighbours' homes."

But of course, if you are like ME, when you read those quotes you thought of three guys court dancing together and a girl launching stuff out of a backyard catapult. Call me idealistic. Call me naive. But in MY mind, being medieval is fun, not a reason to fear something.

I wonder if people of the medieval period used the term "ancient" in the same way though.