Zachary DePiore
zacharydepiore@gmail.com
When Hurricane Katrina impacted Louisiana, America was devastated. The media was quick to report on the event, as the tragedy was of gigantic proportions. Unfortunately, one facet of the coverage of this was racially motivated. As we all saw in Thursday's lecture, there are various examples of race-coded language.
The Associated Press fell victim to this behavior. When describing a picture of two white adults with food, they wrote, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store." When describing a picture of an identical situation involving a person of color, they wrote, "A young man walks through chest-deep flood water after looting a grocery store." The difference between "finding" and "looting" may seem ostensibly small or insignificant, but together they communicate and perpetuate harmful associations between race and language.
According to the lecture, this practice is still common among news rooms all across the nation. A textual analysis research explained that this is particularly bad when it comes to crime reporting. This information was based off of a study conducted in Chicago. The report found that when a crime story involves black people accused of crimes, the images paired with the stories usually involve darkened mugshots or pictures of them being arrested by police officers. The portrayal of white people accused of committing crimes was completely different. Nothing was changed to the mugshots, and no pictures white people being arrested by cops were used.
According to the study, this bias against the Black community has especially impacted Black men. By playing on stereotypes, the media consciously and unconsciously paints Black men as violent and criminals. Using these sort of tactics with pictures and language forces readers to associate Black men with a plethora of racist tropes and stereotypes.
One solution to this problem is to create news rooms that are more diverse. The diversity should be expressed at all levels of a media outlet, from the very top of the organization to the very bottom. The amount of people of color in news rooms is still incredibly disproportionate compared to the amount of white people in news rooms. According to an article from the Columbia Journalism Review, ethnic minorities make up 40 percent of the country's population while comprising only 17 percent of the people working in print-based news outlets. Throughout history, news organizations have pledged (and ultimately to increase diversity in order to truly expand the scope of opinions. It's time that media outlets take greater initiative in creating safe spaces for people of all different backgrounds, and strive towards a more inclusive future.
I think this is a very important and well-put blog post. I also think that diversity in newsrooms should be sincere, and not just for statistics, otherwise the "safe spaces" created will not be that safe at all. I also like that you say even the Associated Press fell victim to race-coded language -- the organization that determines all journalistic writing style. It is upon each individual journalist to do what they can, work for who they can to ensure an inclusive future, which means uplifting voices, taking a step back and standing up for what's right.
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