Aryeh Response 4/4

The book’s section on the media coverage of the civil rights movement was pretty engaging; I think like a lot of people, I am familiar with the event as covered in history books rather than the way it was covered at the time. Because of this, I was somewhat surprised to learn how the media either ignored or didn't appropriately cover the civil rights movement in the national press. When I think about it more, however, it makes sense to me that the media would have covered Dr. King and these events in this way. As a white-controlled enterprise, the mainstream media really did not have a vested interest in civil rights. I thought it was interesting that even the most infamous protests were not covered at length in the mass media. While, as the book states, the media loves to cover violence at protests, because it helps them frame something unfamiliar (difficult political issues) within a familiar category (violence). I think it’s still this way. I recall seeing similar coverage of the occupy movement over the last few years. The news media seems obsessed with violence rather than issues. I can also see how the white, news community's unfamiliarity with African-American culture and causes lead to a lack of coverage. I thought it was absurd that the newspapers had trouble covering Watts because they had no information on the area. While this seems like it would be a thing of the past, I believe that the media still systematically ignores what goes on in African-American neighborhoods. Take, for example, the way the media covers tragedies that involve white children versus those of African-American children.

Another issue that came up quite often in the text was the local vs. national media bias. According to the book, many of the Native-American protests of the 1960’s were covered on a local level but not mentioned nationally. One of the benefits of the internet is that we can find news about issues we care about. When those 60’s protests were going on, you needed to live in an area that received the local paper to get information on what was happening. Though our reading was historical, the mainstream media continue to use formulas to fill news rather than investigate what’s truly happening. At least we have the internet now, no?