An Essay on Bias Media in America

Bias Media 1Running head: BIAS MASS MEDIABias of the American Mass MediaRace Issue PaperDrake GlasenEnglish 111Jacqueline CasonMs. Cornell4/05/2006Bias Media 2The Bias of the American Mass MediaRace and gender codes are constructed from cultural histories, beliefs, and most influentially, the media. According to Omi, (1989) people use race and gender to help identify with a person and how they should relate to others. This way of identifying peopleâ€TMs characteristics is highly susceptible to falling into stereotypes. That is why media coverage can have such a profound effect on peopleâ€TMs views of other races and cultures.

DeMott (1995) argues that Hollywood creates an utopian view of race relations, and that movies such as Lethal Weapon and Driving Miss Daisy promote a positive view of cultural togetherness that is actually false. But DeMott fails to acknowledge that many Hollywood movies and much of American news media depicts minority races in a sadly negative light. DeMott is correct in his thinking that the mass media plays a crucial role in white Americaâ€TMs views of other cultures and races, and that the mediaâ€TMs interpretation of cultures and races is what people are shown. Sadly, however, that interpretation is often skewed and racist. In current headlines, a company from the country of Dubai has been trying to acquire rights to American ports.

This subject raised much debate over foreign involvement in the American economy. The prime reason for the Dubai ports deal failure was the outcry from Americans at letting a Middle Eastern country control American ports. This mentality sadly stemmed from pure ignorance and a racist view of Middle Eastern peoples. In a recent article Friedman (2006) discusses the fact that Dubai is “ethe sort of decent, modernizing model we should be trying to nurture in the Arab-Muslim world†(Friedman, 2006) Dubai is a country building itself using a peaceful and worldly Bias Media 3approach, not violence and suppression. Dubai is exactly the type of country the U.S. should be doing business with. So why was America so afraid to let a peaceful and flourishing Arab nation become in control of their ports? Was it a misunderstanding of another culture, racism, from 9/11, or fear of terrorists? For the American people it is a little bit of all and that misunderstanding, fear, and racism come directly from the mass media. Whenever a Middle Eastern man or woman is in the news today it is hardly ever for a good reason. The extremists are the ones representing an entire culture.

However, it isnâ€TMt just the Middle Eastern people being misrepresented. African-Americans and Latinos are also portrayed in a negative light. Rarely do stories that show the true cultures make it to the air; instead it is the drug busts, bombings, shootings, robberies, murders and rape that are the stars of the headlines. It is estimated that only 8% of African-Americans commit serious crimes such as homicide, rape, robbery, and assault (Balkaran, 1999). So the mass media is misrepresenting approximately 92% of a culture. Where on the other hand, arrest statistics show that in 1994 67% of arrest were of white people, yet this is not how the media represents it (BJS, 1994).A good example of how the media can obscure the legitimacy of an event is the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. The media portrayed the event as being a race riot, being purely based on African-American racial issues, but it was the underlying economic struggle, decay, and lack of political support that had been around for decades that motivated the riots (Harris, 1997). The rioters were portrayed as black criminals but the arrest records show a different story. Only 36% of the rioters were African-American, Bias Media 4and of those over one third had full-time jobs. Approximately 60% of the rioters and looters consisted of whites and Hispanics (Balkaran, 1999).

However, the media neglected to mention this. A more recent example is Hurricane Katrina and the destruction it wrought on New Orleans. Again, African-Americans were depicted looting and fighting; even false reports of rape and murder were broadcasted around the world. What was not shown to the world was the over 63% white population of Louisiana, who also looted (US Census Bureau, 2000). Looting, to a point, was necessary for survival during these hard times, but the mediaâ€TMs depiction antagonized the African-Americans. It can be seen that the mass media has a significant and deep rooted bias, and the affect of that bias is disturbing. The Hurricane Katrina disaster made the racial problems we face today all too obvious. The minorities of the area faced not only discrimination from the media but a major lack of support as well. It took a disturbing amount of time for government support to arrive, leaving the victims of Katrina to the mercy of the devastated land. There was an unmistakable bias being displayed by the federal government during the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the governmentâ€TMs ignorance cost many lives.

To find out were this bias comes from one need only look at the minority employment in the mass media. In the world of mass media the racial minority is the under dog. Minorities constitute approximately 27.3% of the countryâ€TMs population, but only 11.6 percent of news staffs are minorities. A little more can be found on television news staffs, and far less in magazines (Cohen, 1999). This lack of diversity creates considerable Bias Media 5consequences on the content created by the media. In the early 1990s 92% of Nightlineâ€TMs guests were white, 90% of PBS NewsHourâ€TMs guests were white, and 26 out of 27 repeat commentators on National Public Radio were white (Cohen, 1999). The minority is not being heard and is arguably being ignored by the mass media. An example that supports this is that in 1991, shortly after becoming an editor for the New Yorkâ€TMs Daily News, a memo was found by Ellis Cose from his predecessor. The memo stated that no more that one African-American columnist should run in the paper each day (Cohen, 1999). The nation has come a long way from its old slave owning days. All people are now legally considered equals, and racism in our nation has significantly decreased. However, there is still racism or at least unequal representation in Americaâ€TMs mass media. It is up to the people to get all the facts and demand from the media that every person of every ethnic group and culture get equal representation in the coverage of mass media.

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