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Isaiah Brown
Ella Frances Voltz
UWRT 1102-026
November 7, 2015

News Media: Existence of Structural Racism?

Most people watch the news to be aware of what is going on in the neighborhood,
country or the world. The number one source to get information on the social, political or
economic issues that occur. However, in modern times local and network news have a second
purpose that very few individuals are aware of. News media channels are now a source for
entertainment and trying to capture a larger audience than their competitors. For these news
channels, it now becomes a question of what is going to sell or what will capture a lot of peoples
attention. With this second purpose now trumping the first, information is either being left out,
altered or misrepresented as factual. Consider the misrepresentation of African Americans on
local and network news as compared to Caucasians dealing with criminality and heroism. Is
there a hidden system that still stereotypes African Americans into the category of crime when
compared to their Caucasian counterparts through medias portrayal of crime on local and
network news? These questions, along with the information that comes with it, will be strictly
limited to the United States.
According to multiple studies that are presented in The Portrayal of Race and Crime on
Television and Network News race and crime are correlated. An argument can be made that
stereotypes are reinforced based on the images shown of people of color in a criminal way.
Critics and scholars like Travis Dixon, Cristina Azocar and Michael Casas have conducted
research on local and network television broadcast pertaining to the representation (what the

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ethnicity is categorized as based on images and stories) of colored people compared to their
Caucasian counterparts. While these scholars do not have specific numbers to present, they have
done research that feeds into this discussion; they come from a theoretical approach that stems
from studying local and network news channels. The scholars found that African Americans were
twice as likely to be labeled criminals than Caucasians. Caucasians were more likely to be
portrayed as officers and victims than criminals. According to these findings, media portrays
colored people and whites in far different ways than the crime reports would indicate. Dr.
Entman did a content analysis for 3 months of programming for CBS, ABC and NBC. In the
article Crime as a Category by Lauren Nader, she refers to another author by the name of Currie;
Currie shares interesting information gathered from the Sentencing Project during the 1900s.
These findings were: 1). One in three black in men in their mid-twenties were behind bar or
somewhere else. 2). The United States imprisoned black males at four times the rate than South
Africa (Nader 327).

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This is a chart shows how often these crimes are shown on network news compared to actual
crime reports. (Travis Dixon, 2003)
The first black newspaper appeared around 1827 and questioned American society where
African Americans were treated as less than human beings (Bing III 4). However, this view of

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American society remained unpopular because of the lack of sponsorship or support. What is true
in the past is still true in the present, the media controls what will be viewed.
Robert L. Bing III, an author of Media, Race and Crime, argues that media is responsible
for reconstructing reality. The media often doesnt cover less common crimes, as though they
occur every day and are not worth mentioning. How is it determined what crimes get covered in
the media and which get ignored? A concept of Power Structure offers an explanation that could
help make sense of it. In order to elaborate on Power Structure, colonialism must be examined.
Britain along with other Western countries began colonizing foreign lands. According to an
author named Kloby, colonialism can be described as the formal political domination of one
country by another in which the relationship between the two nations is always one of economic
exploitation (Legacy of Colonialism 100). Colonialism can also be viewed as taking over a
nation not only for its resources but also to take over the indigenous people. Taking over these
indigenous people in their nation can be traced back to attitudes presented in Ethnocentrism and
Eurocentrism. Amin, author of Eurocentrism chapter in Beyond the Boarders, suggests that, like
racism, Eurocentrism can manifest itself in various ways like relationships between people and
views of society and culture (Amin 97). Judging the text, it seems the Amin took a sarcastic tone
when explaining how Europe has the seemingly perfect system relating to military, science,
efficiency, equality for all and social justice (Amin 98). Supposedly, every country should want
to be like those of Europe and progress to a perfect society. In the minds of those who support
this attitude or ideology, it would make sense to help guide the world to a European utopia. Since
European countries are supposedly the perfect models on which all nations should be based, it
should only matter what Europeans think. This would help explain why some things in the news

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or media do not get covered while others do. This would help justify the process of colonialism
or in other words, help civilize people.
Ethnocentrism and eurocentrism can also be explained as assigning values to difference
between ones culture and another. Geertz gives a fresh perspective on how to interpret culture.
They describe culture as a semiotic concept and a web of significance that mankind has
constructed for himself (Geertz 31). The definition of semiotic is to assign meaning to symbols
and actions that have no meaning otherwise. So, what happens when someone sees actions or
symbols they dont agree with? They will seek to compare it to their own life style and put a
negative value on it because that is not how they live. After assigning a negative value to the
cultural difference (as far as calling them primitive or barbaric in nature) ethnocentric people will
seek to save the seemingly imperfect culture from themselves by showing them how to live. This
kind of thinking can be used to justify the slave trade and be perceived as trying to save Africans
from living the way they were used to around the 1600s. However, this perception of the nature
of a group of people remains fixed because they are constantly looking outward from their own
cultural standpoint.
After thinking about all the relevant terms with a fresh perspective, it paints a new picture
of how society might function. Something like crime can be looked in more than one social or
cultural perspective. Medias portrayal of criminals as mostly African American could be a
coincidence or could be part of a system to maintain a social order where minorities are kept in
their place. As the media keeps showing persuasive images of criminals as colored people, the
audience will feed into it. The average citizen takes the news to be mostly factual and cover
actual events as they occur. What the audience is unware of is the persuasive side of media.
Media can pick and choose what is covered and how it will be presented to the public. There is

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no sure solution to combat the racial profiling and stereotypes that plague society. However, that
doesnt mean it can be ignored.

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Bibliography
Amin, S. (2006). Eurocentrism. In P. Rothenberg, Beyond Borders (pp. 97-98). New
York: Worth Publishers.
Ferguson, A. G. (1973). Beyond Culture: Space, Identity and the Politics of
Difference. Culture, Power Place: Explorations of Critical Anthropology, 61-67.
Geertz, C. (1973). Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.
Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays, 30-39.
III, R. L. (2009). Race, Crime and The Media. McGraw-Hill Education.
Kloby, J. (2006). The Legacy of Colonialism. In P. Rothenberg, Beyond Borders (pp.
99-105). New York: Worth Publishers.
Nader, L. (2001). Crime as a Category. The Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice,
327-339.
Travis Dixon, C. A. (2003). The Portrayal of Race and Crime on Television Network
News. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 498-520.