4/4 Response to Larson

This week’s reading focused on media coverage of minorities’ social movements. After the overview, there was one chapter on media coverage of African-Americans’ civil rights movements and one chapter including coverage of all Asian-Americans’, Native-Americans’, and Latinos’ movements. At one point the author pointed out that media often ignores minority movements other than African-Americans, but I thought it was a little ironic that she subsequently lumped the others together and said of most of their movements that their beginnings are probably in the African-American civil right movements in from the 1950-70s.

The critique the author set up in the first chapter of the section focused on how the media does not help promote the agendas of minority movements by either downplaying their importance, demonizing the movement, or discounting their motives, or simply ignoring groups who have a social agenda. The second chapter in the section was about media coverage of African-American social movements, mainly civil rights era protests and organizations. The author said that in general, it was widely held that the media was on the side of the activists by spreading their message. She didn’t seem to want to believe this though. She went on to make the exception that it was easier for journalists to take sides in what was fairly a good side/bad side situation. She also detailed media coverage of many major civil rights movements and protests, but some of it still seemed like she was making an effort to show how the media is still bad in general.

The third and final chapter in the section included all other minorities, each of which had been given their own chapter in previous section. I wonder why the author decided to break with this formula. Clearly she did not have as much to say, or there was less information, but it still seemed a bit unfair. My first reaction to this imbalance was to think of my own knowledge of media coverage. It occurred to me that the history of American slavery might have created more background for a larger movement and that was the reason my public school education did not mention Latino, Asian, or Native-American social protests, but then the author also pointed out so many actual protests and movements happened. I’m almost ashamed to say how surprised I was at how little I learned in history. One thing I find a bit ironic was that I had heard about Latino labor movements, but it wasn’t in Texas public schools. It was in my tiny private school in Delaware. We read a book about it, but I guess it makes sense considering how much of a religious focus Chavez’ movement had that it might seem to be one of the most “moral” protests for my little school to focus on.