Racism in the News

I remember working at Barnes and Noble my senior year of high school, and as we were closing up for the night, headed out of the break room and down the escalator, I asked my co-workers if anyone was keeping up with the coverage of the Casey Anthony story--something that had caught my attention while watching Nancy Grace (stop laughing; Fox News is on 24/7 at my parents' house; it could not be helped). One of my co-workers, a college-aged, very liberal white guy named Chris scoffed at me and made some remark that of COURSE Fox News is covering the murder of a little white girl, as usual, and how often did I see them covering stories about little black girls?

I considered myself to be pretty conservative in high school and was probably a little taken aback by his comment, but it stuck with me as I noticed how, on the news, an injustice against a white is an absolute tragedy while injustices against blacks or other minorities are... well, not really reported. Of course the murder of anyone is a tragedy, but his comment made me realize how the media sympathizes more strongly with whites... but with blacks and other minorities, perhaps their take is that crime is to be expected?

I feel like everything I'm typing feels like an awful thing to say, but then again, the media's representation (or misrepresentation) of race is pretty awful (and I've got a few examples below to support this point/make me feel better about all the awful conclusions I'm drawing).

Larson states that "news is in the business of trying to appeal to the mainstream (white, middle-class American) audience" (85). Naturally this mainstream audience is going to find it more shocking when a little white girl is murdered versus when a black child is murdered because their sympathy lies with the child who looks like it could be one of their own. They cannot possibly imagine something like this happening in their own safe neighborhoods, where it is likely that everyone is white. Black people, as Larson explains in Chapter 8, are consistently associated with crime in the media. When they are represented, it is usually as the perpetrator and not the victim. Then, when a black person is the victim, it's often the "alleged" murder, or a case that needs to be investigated further before confirming that yes, an injustice was done to a black person. Or, the victim may even be at fault in some way that would be unimaginable were it a white person: Geraldo Rivera's comments about Trayvon Martin are one such example.

Because this is okay:

 But this is not:

Some other gems from Fox News (I know, I could try to be more varied in my examples but they make it so damn easy): Michelle Obama fulfilling the angry black woman stereotype, Bill O'Reilly letting us know what a coke dealer looks like, and Bill O'Reilly letting us know what Asians are like. 

The conclusion drawn here is that the media will continue to perpetuate racist stereotypes because we, the mainstream white audience, are comfortable with that representation--or rather, we have not expressed our discomfort.