http://suite101.com/article/stereotypes-of-minorities-in-the-media-a134017
After reading this article, it talks about how the media portrays minorities and how that affects the view of what minorities in low income areas are really like. It talks about how the media primarily and purposely focuses on minorities and creates the images to viewers about what a criminal looks like and where criminals are more likely to be found. As stated in the article, minorities are shown in news restrained and escorted by authorities while white people are next to the lawyer. Also media always target areas of lower income and focuses on the crimes of the minorities that occur there, depicting to the general public that these people are dangerous, meaning blacks in urban environments. This reflects onto Emile Durkheim “What is a Social Fact”. What do the general public know as facts and what is actually stereotypes being pushed in to them. What we know as one form of learning and discovering, the news, can be such a biased and manipulated form of media, what can one take in from it to be actual facts. When presented with new media, do people not automatically make assumptions or stereotypes right away because constantly being fed with these images of what is suppose to be a criminal and where they are to happen, one can not see pass it and creates the same stereotype. The medias influence on what is viewed as news and facts creates these stereotypes or further perpetuates them and society wont be able to move pass these stereotypes.
The media really does play a huge part in how minorities are viewed and how urban areas are viewed as a whole. I did notice how minorities are bombarded by news personnel when they are arrested. Cameras are taking pictures of them and videotaping them in a very vulnerable state: with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. And whites are captured in a very different light, this is the part that I never noticed. Whites aren’t seen being dragged from their homes in the middle of the night but Blacks are. Furthermore, white collar crimes in middle America are as a whole less seen in the media than violent crimes in urban communities. My guess is that violent crimes that are racially concentrated are more “sexy” than white collar crimes. Violent crimes arouse the suspicions of the people who consume media and play on these people’s emotions. Their emotions (anger, fear and hopelessness) are what cause them to have negative feelings toward urban America. People will always assume that urban areas are crime-ridden and that most crimes occur in these areas. The article clearly states that the amount of crimes being reported are disproportionate when it comes to race and demographics. I remember last year at Jouvert (Caribbean Carnival), a couple people were murdered. As tragic as this may seem, several other murders occurred Labor Day weekend in other parts of the city. But somehow, the media managed to link every single murder that weekend to the Labor Day Parade and Jouvert. Even though the murders were in no way, shape or form related to Jouvert, somehow all these murders had something in common: they all involved black people. Therefore, they were all grouped together and West Indians (and black people as a whole) were seen as the culprit of every murder that weekend. The media was responsible for this misconception.