An Analysis of Mass Media and Racism
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-Americans' 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 divide, something indisputably American about African-Americans has raised doubts about the white man's value system. Indeed, it has also aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow black.
Racism
Before attempting 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.
Racist Culture argues that racial discourse may be interpreted as aversive, academic, scientific, legalistic, bureaucratic, economic, cultural, linguistic, religion, mythical, or ideological.
We also stress that racialized discourse and racist expressions towards African American have been widespread. Race matters exist in different places and at different times under widely varying conditions. American race relations provides a case study in class theory. It is argued that society has two classes: the exploited or working class, and the exploiters or owners of the means of production. It is further stressed that one class will ultimately overpower the other using any necessary means. Looking at American society we can clearly see the development of the two-class system. There were slave owners and slaves, and racism served as a means to overpower the exploited class.
Segmentation Theory
In the 1980's, some say and many adopted what can be called 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 of American Society is to maximize profits over the well-being of people. 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.
Proponents argue 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? Does the elite use the media to ensure profits are maximized by corporations?
The 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 actively attempting to crush 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. The media have devoted too much time and space to "enumerating the wounded" and too little time to describing the background problems African Americans face daily.
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.
The Riots
The media have not studied important events in the African American community today. Issues such as urbanization, education, violence by the police, 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 and that related to protest about murder of George Floyd by police. What we witnessed in Los Angeles was the consequence of a lethal linkage of economic decline, cultural decay, and political lethargy in American life. In the case of Floyd, it was outright murder under the color of authority by police. Race was the visible catalyst, not the underlying cause, as 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 later Los Angeles riots. 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 is never researched or explained in prior or later stories.
The U.S. News, Media and Race
Clearly, 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 seek to serve a mainly white audience, it follows 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.
