White Oriented Media example essay topic

It is to the media that the vast majority of the American public turn for their information. From this single source, the American people receive their knowledge of the world. It is through this singular, narrow channel of communication that ignorant and apathetic people are selectively fed false, biased, and fabricated information. The media's coverage of breaking news and events that shape our culture in the United States is biased when it reports the crimes associated with race and ethnicity.

Race, income and social status are the major contributors and aspects that influence the story. Mystery, intrigue, deception and isolation are words that best describe the techniques used by mass media. The media's technique of isolation is usually directed specifically at minorities. When I use the word isolation, I mean to separate, to show indifference and to see a situation in a narrow content.

Isolation of a particular race, ethnic group or class may vary and can be either positive or negative. The media has been able to twist the truth before the very eyes of the American public. It is only in the media where the innocent man can become guilty and a good man become evil. The average moral man becomes immoral and vice versa.

The truth is often sacrificed for the sake of entertainment, ratings, and the attraction of the advertising dollar. How can one expect the truth from an organization consumed by the pursuit of profit, or by an organization more interested in the entertainment value of its information than the accuracy of it? Mass media have, played and will continue to play, a crucial role in the way white Americans perceive African-Americans. As a result of the overwhelming media focus on crime, drug use, gang violence, and other forms of anti-social behavior among African-Americans, the media have fostered a distorted and pernicious public perception of African-Americans. The history of African-Americans is a centuries old struggle against oppression and discrimination. The media have played a key role in perpetuating the effects of this historical oppression and in contributing to African-American's continuing status as second-class citizens.

As a result, white America has suffered from a deep uncertainty as to who African-Americans really are. Despite this racial division, something indisputably American about African-Americans has raised doubts about the white man's value system. It has also aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also black. Racism Before you make an attempt to understand racism and mass media, one must understand the history of racism. Race has become an institutional part of American society. From the Founding on, race has played an integral part in shaping the American consciousness.

David Goldberg's Racist Culture argues that racial discourse may be interpreted as aversive, academic, scientific, legalistic, bureaucratic, economic, cultural, linguistic, religion, mythical, or ideological. He also stresses that racialize d discourse and racist expressions towards African-American have been widespread. Race matters exist in different places and at different times under widely varying conditions. Segmentation Theory In the 1980's, Michael Reich developed the Segmentation Theory or the Divide and Rule, which attempted to explain racism from an economic point of view. In this theory, Reich proposes that the ultimate goal in society is to maximize profits. As a result, the exploiters will attempt to use any means to: (1) suppress higher wages among the exploited class, (2) weaken the bargaining power of the working class, often by attempting to split it along racial lines, (3) promote prejudices, (4) segregate the black community, (5) ensure that the elite benefit from the creation of stereotypes and racial prejudices against the black community.

Reich argues that the major corporations in the U.S. (e.g. Time Warner, Coca Cola, General Motors, etc.) all have at least one member on each other's corporate boards of directors. As a result, it is in the interest of these members to maximize profits while employing the above devices. The mere fact of these corporate executives sharing economic corporate power, combined with the quest for economic profit has now paved the way for economic discrimination. But the question still remains, is the media one of the tools used to promote racism? U.S. Media And Racism Media have divided the working class and stereotyped young African-American males as gangsters or drug dealers. As a result of such treatment, the media have crushed youths' prospects for future employment and advancement. The media have focused on the negative aspects of the black community (e.g. engaging in drug use, criminal activity, welfare abuse) while maintaining the cycle of poverty that the elite wants.

There are no universally accepted and recorded codes or rules, which apply to journalists in news selection and production. Example: Mark Fuhrman, the retired Los Angeles detective who testified in the O.J. Simpson trial, used racial slurs (nigger) during his testimony. This wasn't the first time journalists had to figure out how to say "nigger" without offending people. But Fuhrman's testimony of bigoted, corrupt policing in Los Angeles combined with O.J. Simpson's international celebrity forced the issue into the face of the media decision-makers across the country and the world. The word has perhaps more power than all of the profanity that gets into the newspaper and onto the airwaves.

It is meant to degrade people. By not using the actual word, the media did not deliver the full impact or the full truth of Fuhrman's words. The media have devoted too much time and space to "enumerating the wounded" and too little time to describing the background problems of African-Americans. What is not a crisis is not usually reported and what is not or cannot be made visual is often not televised. The news media respond quickly and with keen interest to the conflicts and controversies of racial stories. For the most part, they disregard the problems that seep beneath the surface until they erupt in the hot steam that is the "live" news story.

Important Events The media have not studied important events in the African-American community today. Issues such as urbanization, education, poverty, and other elements have a significant bearing on positions of the black community. A good example of this is the media portrayal of the Los Angeles riot in 1992. What we witnessed in Los Angeles was the consequence of a lethal linkage of economic decline, cultural decay, and political lethargy in American life. Race was the visible catalyst, not the underlying cause, as the media portrayed it to be. The portrayal of this individual event encouraged the perception that the black community was solely responsible for the riots and disturbances.

According to reports, of those arrested, only 36% were black and of those arrested, more than a third had full-time jobs and most had no political affiliation. Some 60% of the rioters and looters were made up of Hispanics and whites. Yet the media did not report this underlying fact. The media portrayal of this event along with other race riots has again inflicted negative charges and scorn on black awareness. Race riots in Miami in 1980 were similar to the Los Angeles riots that happened later. Here the media also refused to search for the underlying cause behind the protest choosing instead only to depict African-American males engaged in violence and destruction.

The underlying factors behind these problems were never researched or explained in prior stories. The defense put on by the four white Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney King in 1991 is extremely suspect. They claimed that they were scared and felt they might have been attacked or harmed. This is always a legitimate excuse in the white American society.

It was obvious to anyone that watched the video of this beating that the officers took pleasure in this. Their "fear" is a manifestation of a deep-rooted media bias that anything black is bad. This media stereotype of bad guys wearing black or that anything that is black is evil has been fostered for decades. Example: the fact that the bad guy always wore the black in Westerns. This media bias has also been illustrated in the Susan Smith case. Smith was the South Carolina woman who made headlines when she claimed that a black male kidnapped her two young children.

It turned out that Smith herself had killed them. However, the typical "blame it on the black guy syndrome and finger-pointing" that her accusations set off are indicative of the media's reflexive need to blame blacks for social ills. This same reflex can also be seen in the case of Charles Stuart in Boston who killed his wife and also blamed it on a black man. The media have taken a step further in Hollywood. Here, the portrayal of young African-American males (involved in gangs and other deviant acts of violence) has become a multimillion dollar industry. American society has now accepted these stereotypes, which the film media have ascribed to the black community.

Films such as Boyz in the Hood and Menace II Society have become multimillion dollar success stories with criminal portrayals of young blacks. This portrayal, over time, has fostered false beliefs in white America regarding the way we perceive and view blacks. What the media refuses to acknowledge is that the vast majority of blacks are employed, attend school, and are not involved in gangs or other criminal activities. The profit motive behind continuing this stereotype is a fact. It is in the interest of the elite to use media to demean one class by using racial stereotype in order to maximize their profits. The economic structure of the American news media and the local media make them subject to pressures from powerful interest groups.

In 1967, the Kerner Report attacked the mass media for their inadequate handling of day-to-day coverage of racial events. The report charged the media with failing to properly communicate about race to the majority of their audience. That is, white America needed to hear more about the actual conditions and feelings of African-Americans in the U.S. Only when events are associated with concern of the "white public" do they become newsworthy. Given the situation in America where the major news media have predominantly white reporters and serve a mainly white audience, it stands to reason that the "public" which dictates newsworthy events is a white public. The day-to-day tensions of black existence and exploitation, which are crucial concerns of the black community, are not primary concerns of the white public. Only the symptoms of these conditions, such as freedom rides and social disturbances, impinge upon whites.

Therefore, it is only such "events" which become newsworthy in a white press. One of the main reasons for the inadequate coverage of the underlying causes of racial stereotypes in the U.S. is that the condition of blacks itself is not a matter of high interest to the white majority. Their interest in black America is focused upon situations in which their imagined fear becomes a real problem. Events like boycotts, pickets, civil rights demonstrations, and particularly racial violence mark the point at which black activity impinges on white concerns. It is no surprise that the white-oriented media seek to satisfy the needs of their white audience and reflect this pattern of attention to these selected events.

Research has disclosed that most serious crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, and assault) in inner cities are committed by a very small proportion of African-American youth, some 8% by estimates. Yet the tendency to characterize all African-American males as criminals continues in our society. As a result of this stereotype, racial profiling is common. The negative stereotype has continued to affect the black community, as well as their prospects for employment and advancement. All this has been destroyed and, as an end result, it has contributed to high unemployment within the African-American community. Some Selected Statistics What the media refuse to acknowledge is the fact that between 1967 and 1990, the percentage of black families with incomes of a least $50,000 more than doubled from 7 to 15 percent.

The median income of African-American families in which both husband and wife worked rose from $28,700 in 1967 to $40,038 in 1990, an increase of more than 40 percent. The white family median income with two wage earners increased 17 percent during this period, from $40,040 to $47,247. The consequence of racially biased coverage is to maintain racist stereotypes in popular culture and to lead us further towards a dysfunctional society. Since the news media are staffed and controlled almost exclusively by whites, it would seem that institutionalized racist attitudes play a huge role in running the media. The dysfunctional aspect of this bias emerges when the realistic concerns of African-Americans are dismissed as irrelevant or threatening to the majority population. Conclusion The media have and will continue to portray a self-serving negative stereotype of the African-American community.

The societal and economic factors of racism have become more than just a bias. They are also a profitable industry, in which the elite will continue to suppress the lower class in order to maximize profits. According to Harvard Professor Cornell West, one percent of the elite holds some 48% of America's wealth. This means that media, racism, and stereotypes will continue to be employed so that those elite can be sure of their continuing economic stability. In order for mass media to change its imbedded racist and biased reporting pertaining to race, certain laws will have to be passed restricting how the media reports crime relating to minorities.

The media has to thoroughly research, investigate, and explain all the underlying factors associated with a story. A governmental agency is needed to regulate and police mass media. Mass media has to be held accountable for its actions. If mass media is fined for distorting and negatively embellishing a story of race related crime, it will start to make systematic changes in its culture to reflect accurate and unbiased coverage of the way it reports crime associated with race and ethnicity.

Bibliography

Ronald L. Taylor, "The Harm Wrought by Racial Stereotype", Hartford Courant, 19 March 1995, D 1.
Ralph Ellison, What America Would be like without Blacks. (Pre ager Press, 1970), 4.
David Goldberg, Racist Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 42.
Paul G. Hartmann, Racism and the Media (Rowman & Littlefield Press, 1974), 147.
Cornell West, Race Matters (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 74.