MEDIA PRACTICE RACISM, PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPING

MEDIA, WHILE CRITICAL OF OTHERS, CONDONE AND PRACTICE RACISM, PREJUDICE, AND STEREOTYPING

 

The media is highly culpable of perpetuating racism, prejudice and stereotyping while at the same time shining light on others who do the same thing. This often is revealed by shining the light on groups that fail to bring minorities into their lily white (or token minority) organizations while justifying their own lily white/tokenism media organizations by claiming lack of qualifications or some other bogus claim. The media is quick to unsurface stereotyping by others but ignore their own stereotyping.

 

Media racism, prejudice and stereotyping are evidence both by their hiring practices and by their presentation and representation. While the hiring of minorities have improved recently, the media still do not hire minorities in the proportion of their representation in society. And when they do hire them, it is in highly visible positions (for public consumption). But when you look at the total numbers, you often find token representation deeper in the organization, more like 99% white to 1% minority. This is also typical in private sector and government organizations that the media will happily point out. I have often pointed out, when the CIA claimed not to have sufficient ground intelligence in foreign countries (e.g. Iraq), that they (CIA) were too afraid to hire the people of color that could blend in with people where intelligence was needed. I assumed that they didn’t trust them well enough. When the question was asked about lack of such hires, one always got the usual answer “couldn’t find qualified minorities.” I thought that was bogus since I ran a highly professional engireering company and never had a problem finding qualified minorities.

 

Stereotyping is ever prevalent in the media. The media often highlight specific characteristics of minorities and this is often used to typify whole groups of people. Primary among this is the identification of racial background (e.g., the suspect was a black male) when that is simply not warranted. Similar identifications do not follow for whites although with the onset of increased video coverage such identification become mute. This leads to a situation where assumptions are made about people on the basis of stereotyping. Often the media is guilty of misrepresenting minorities as lazy, inferior, lawless, liars, and has the inability to adapt to societal upbringing. This perpetuates in the minds of the public that these people are just bad and not to be trusted (even people that have no racial bias are often persuaded by the media to believe untruths).

 

I recall while living in an upscale community one of my white neighbors contacted me stating that he saw a red car full of blacks in the neighborhood and believed they were up to no good further stating that there had been a series of break-ins recently. I happen to know the people in the car. It was a man, his wife and two kids about to settle on an expensive home in the area. I told him that they were house hunting. Also, there were no reported break-ins in the neighborhood. When media perpetuates stereotypes, it has profound negative impacts on the unsuspecting public. I recall in another instance when a young white girl by the name of Elizabeth Smart got kidnapped. Every day the media broadcasted info on the missing Smart case until eventually the little girl was found (A white couple had kidnapped her). Well, there was another girl, a black girl (Alexis Patterson), that went missing about the same time but the news on her missing could hardly be found. CBSNews.com David Hancock raised the question “Why is the media giving so much attention to a kidnapped white girl in Utah, when Milwaukee has an equally horrible situation involving a missing black girl?” There are numerous other cases where a missing white girl gets coverage in the media but the missing black girl is only found in some dead data record. This my brother is blatant media bias.