Media Influences Racial Relations

How the media influences racial relations
On Saturday August 9, 2014 Michael Brown and his friend were walking down the street in Ferguson, Missouri and were approached by a white police officer for jay-walking. There are several eye witness accounts as to what happens next but the fact of the matter is that Michael Brown, a black teenage male, was shot to death while unarmed. After the shooting happened, there was media frenzy like no other. The media was so eager to get on the story; they got into a “get it first” mentality instead of a “get it right” mentality. The media controls all aspects of what Americans have access to in our daily lives. They essentially have the power to tell us what is important and what is not. The media’s influence on society is substantial. They report what will get ratings and what they believe people are most intrigued by, not what is always what is best. This especially applies to negative media. The media shows things that are “ratings getters” not what is actually going on in the world. This causes the stories they report on to be lacking in accurate detail and often leads to unethical practices. Media reports also often
take politics into consideration and who may be impacted by the report. The negative reports from the media in racial relationships cause fear; whites afraid of blacks, blacks afraid of whites, everyone afraid of Arabs, etc. What needs to be examined is why people have worked so hard to get away from racism and segregation just to get right back to segregating ourselves from other races all based on what the media has to say about them. The current events in Ferguson, Missouri represent a larger conversation that the nation should be having about race relations and how the media reports on race in the United States.
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When the events of Ferguson, Missouri erupted, journalists nationwide reported on the shooting without any details to back any conclusions to their reports up. They speculated on the reasons behind the shooting and even went so far as to say that because Michael Brown was “possibly stealing cigars from a gas station, liked hip hop music and had marijuana in his system, and was not an innocent victim.” Regardless of these facts, Michael Brown was unarmed. “Police officers are allowed to shoot under two circumstances," David Klinger, a University of Missouri-St. Louis professor who studies use of force, told Vox. The first circumstance is "to protect their life or the life of another innocent party" — what departments call the "defense-of-life" standard. The second circumstance is to prevent a suspect from escaping, but only if the officer has probable cause to think the suspect 's committed a serious violent felony.” Michael Brown’s shooting did not fall under any of these circumstances.
So why does the media portray Michael Brown as “less than a victim”? As a society we like to only seek justice for perfect people. When a person, especially a teenager, who has imperfections, is a victim of a crime, especially a racial crime, it is seen as deserved. Civil Rights leaders have been dealing with this for some time. MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry spoke about How the Media portrayed Michael Brown on August 24, 2014 and also spoke about 1955, when nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give her seat up on a public bus to a white person; another young lady had already refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white person. Her name was Claudette Coven and she was 15 years old. She too, was hauled away and arrested, but because she was 15 years old and was found to be pregnant after her arrest, civil rights leaders at the time, although they were looking for someone to use as an example, would not take up her case. Why? It was because of her imperfections. She was not who white America wanted to see sitting next to them. While at that time there was not much in the way of media coverage, even for Rosa Parks, she was, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote later, “ideal for the role assigned to her by history. Her character was impeccable.” (Marin Luther King Jr.)
This still happens today but even more predominantly and more easily. Per Neilson.com, more than half of US homes have more than three television sets. That is a lot of exposure to other people’s opinions. As if all of the media attention of the shooting itself were not enough for the town of Ferguson, and the family of Michael Brown, who were trying to grieve, we as Americans were then intrigued by watching as the citizens of the town were looting and destroying it in protest. These images were what the media portrayed but actually what was going on but the media again had something new and large to report on. The people of Ferguson while feeling justified in their protests and was more than within their rights, they were not helping the matter. In fact, they were in some people’s opinions making it worse. Michael Brown’s family were even asking those who were participating to stop, fearing more people would die and all the while, journalists from around the country were there with their cameras to capture every moment, portraying the black community of Ferguson as criminals themselves. Not to make sure that the American people were informed, but to get ratings, to have the biggest story, to be the “first to get it” not the “first to get it right”.
According to USA today, there were an average of 96 instances of white cops killing black men per year between 2005 & 2012 and 95% of all officer involved shootings are labeled as “justifiable homicide”.
In 2011, according to Rare.us, 2,630 whites were murdered by other whites in the United States. Where are the journalists when these murders take place? Robert Entman of George Washington University highlighted in Media Matters, states that “Blacks and Latinos are more likely to appear as lawbreakers in the news; particularly when the news is focusing on violent crime, Whites are overrepresented as victims of violence and as law-enforcers, while blacks are underrepresented in these sympathetic roles, and black victims are less likely to be covered than white victims in newspaper coverage of
crime.”
CONCLUSION:
The media is more responsible for racial profiling than any other source. All of the fears people have against any other races besides our own are imbedded in what we watch, read and hear. While our parents play a significant role in what we learn to believe as children and most often influence our racial beliefs as well, it is the media that teaches us who is who and what is what as adults. The media influences all of our relationships in regards to race. It tells us that black people are poor and white people are powerful. The media shows us that all Arab people are extremists and terrorists. Ferguson, Missouri is no different in the eyes of the media. It’s a place predominantly populated by African Americans and therefore must be full of crime and hatred.
Does the media really influence the way we behave and what we think about other races? Why do we let the media influence what we believe about black people or white people or anyone else of a different color or culture? If we analyze fully and look at things in a bigger picture, the media is largely responsible for impressing upon their way of thinking into the minds of people with false concepts and morbid stories. They lead us to believe that there are only two choices, the one they are sharing or the opposite. This will determine whether it is right or wrong in the eyes of everyone else.
When Michael Brown was shot by Darren Wilson on that August night, the media wanted you to believe that it was justified, they wanted you to side with the police force. The media told the powerful, white, politically involved audience exactly what they wanted to hear, that another black teenage thug got shot and a white cop was protecting himself. Even if it were a lie, even if they did “get it first” instead of “getting it right.” Works Cited
Klinger, David. Vox