To What Extent Have the Issues of Ethnic Representation in the Media Changed - Essay Example

From the sociological point of view media helps we perceive ourselves from the point of view gender and race. Sociologically speaking mediais the very essence which helps us classify the concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Media helps us in constructing a cultural construct and then fitting us in that construct; we see the world or perceive it as is shown by the media. Media helps us to understand who is powerful and who is not or who has the right to exercise violence and whom we should follow and so on and so forth. Speaking in further terms media teaches us what to do, what to feel, what to desire, what to fear and what to believe and what not to. Media creates a cultural pedagogy. Therefore it is clear that if media creates a cultural pedagogy then it plays a formidable role in representing the ethical or racial minorities. (Dines and Humez, 2002) Questions relating to the media and the minorities are always directed towards the representation of the minorities by the media because according to Mr. Masterman media is an essential system representation of representation or it may be said that it is concerned with the acute or specific representations of the minorities by the media. It is rightly said that media should not only look after the actual representation of the media but it should also be kept in mind that the minorities get adequate access of the media not only at the national and regional level but also at the local level because if the minorities do not get adequate access of the media they do not get the scope of knowing whether they are over represented or under represented by the media or whether the media is portraying their situation correctly or not.(Vargaftig, 1997) It has been studied and found out that the though the media represents the minorities but the way it represents the minorities actually  does trivialize, degrade, contradict them. Thus the media can be complained of misrepresenting the minorities and as the media misrepresents the minorities the others or the whites see the conditions of the minorities as shown and don’t understand the actual condition of the minorities and as a result what happens even if the people who are interested to help the minorities do not become aware of their pathetic condition and the minorities lose all chance of receiving help. The term Media encompasses everything ranging from internet, films, newspapers, and books and so on. More accurately media basically helps to disseminate information to the audience.  To be more precise these days media is the fourth pillar of our democracy and in the last decade it has seen a sea-change, whether it is in terms revenue earning, reporting pattern and all others. Sticking to the objectivity of the news is not the only prerogative today; media is going for more analytical and descriptive stories. Even the kind of news items in press have changed. Philanthropic subjects have given room to exclusive news and sensational items occupy a bulk space. Reporting on issues of ethnic representation in media hardly finds space and if it does it is either demeaning or stereotypical. In a study of Canadian news media highlighted the gulf between objective reporting and the distorted image of ethnic and visible minorities in the news coverage. By either overlooking minorities or presenting them in the role of villain, journalists unconsciously tell us stories about who is relevant and important, who is trustworthy, and who can make trouble. As these stories are frequent in the news, they become the "accepted understandings among those to whom alternative interpretations are not evident” (Ungerleider, 1991). In Britain few newspapers serve communities with ethnic minority populations. Even editors of various newspapers have cold shouldered the representation of ethnic people. They say they get only few applications from the representatives of ethnic groups and attribute this fraction to scarcity of minority ethnic students on journalism courses. This is indeed appalling and shocking too in a time of growing celebration of diversity of ethnic culture and people and concern about interethnic tensions (Alia and Bull, 2005). In the main stream media, ethnic people are usually attributed as the child of lesser gods, someone who are marginalized and disadvantaged. Discrimination based on religion, culture is found in abundance in today’s media. It is predominantly seen that across the world that editors as well as staff of various newspapers are composed of various elitist groups. Having a sense of elitism running over various media houses, representations of ethnic group in news reports find little place. Even if the reports of ethnic community get published there is ambivalence. Readers on one hand may read about events that they interpret as highlighting the negative characteristics of ethnic groups. On the flip side, the more liberal media at least report about cases of discrimination and prejudice. There are many instances. It was seen during the urban disorders in Great Britain in 1985; editorials in the popular press say that “they have nothing against the black community but…….” (Dijk, 1991: 8) It is interesting to see whether the British media in the 1980s have done a better job when reporting the turbulence in the UK and whether the media still write from a white-skinned man’s perception of the world. It is of relevance to note the comments of the black communities, which were even more critical of print media than of television. One member of black community was quoted as saying “the average black person could not give less of a damn about what the media say. An intelligent black always has a complaint at the back of his or her mind that the treatment of the minority group is never adequately represented by the media. Most black people see the newspapers as mouthpieces of the power structure.” (Dijk, 1991:12) One of the reasons cited for this black resentment against the press was that during any turmoil journalists generally rely on the police for their much needed information and thereby reporting on the basis of what the officials are doing and saying rather than the opinions and doings of black citizens. Among the other findings about the grievances are the non-presence of black journalists in the media houses and the lack of balance reporting in the publications. In other studies in the USA regarding the coverage of the racial crisis by media it is found that even here the Press has paid insufficient attention to the civil unrest, that is to the grave problems with which blacks are confronted such as social discrimination, lack of adequate education, housing, health care and insufficiency of other basic amenities to survive. It was also found that predominance of white perspective over criminalization of blacks rule the media like nothing else. Charles Ivers, a worker for the National Association for Advancement of Colored People dryly says “The Press has been and is one of the worst enemies, along with police, that the Negro has in Mississippi” (Dijk, 1991:13). Another complaint which is often raised about media is that Press seldom prints truth about America. The truth which is indeed hard to believe, as America is thought to be the most advanced, liberal country in the globe, is that America is a racist country. Press would not acknowledge it because they are the part and parcel of racism that engulfed America. They do not hire black people and thus their voices hardly get printed in the papers. Despite the improvements in giving importance to ethnic group such as black people in America in 1985, media still remain focused on stereotypical and negatives issues. Now media convey reports on black people in a roundabout way. The media tries to say that the situation of the Blacks has improved after the Civil War but in reality the situation is not so in fact in many places the situation has worsened. The coverage of ethnic affairs in the media will always be that of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. In 1987, articles on ethnic group in newspaper represented them as drug pushers, thieves, dirty, troublemakers, violent or failing students. Another thing is that the concept of racism remains a taboo in the Press. ‘Disadvantaged’ or ‘underprivileged’ are euphemistically used to denote the victims of racism. Even magazines too do not focus on ethnic people. Media has not only under represented the Blacks but it has portrayed the practice of racism in a very vocal manner in the movie Crash (2004) directed by Paul Haggis. The movie revolves around the stereo type concept of racism which the American whites practice a lot in their daily lives. It is a depiction of their mind sets and how differently they treat the minorities is it at traffic stops or at other arenas of life. The film deals with racial conflicts and it delves into the origin of racial conflict, not only that it also studies how the general people who are subject to racism react to the treatment, what they feel and the kind of inhibitions which they feel. As far as the movie is concerned it revolves around the idea of traffic crash or the everyday crash of life which we experience due to various contradictions the main being the racial contradictions. The hard fact of the movie is that people tend to dislike one another just by judging their outward appearances and not knowing the person. The movie also points at the idea that the whites have a strange notion that all the Blacks are attached to criminal activities and they are bound to get ill treatment from the cops. Hence we can say that the movie may have both effects it may either justify the ill treatment of the Blacks or it may raise conscience among the people that the treatment meted out to the Blacks is not correct and hence needs to be reformed. Therefore the media should be very careful in the way it treats a subject because as we are very much dependant on the media we may take a wrong signal and advance in the wrong direction. (Ebert, 2005: 145) Thus it is very clear that the minorities are under represented by the media (Eitzen, 2006:120)because the chance of earning higher revenue is comparatively lower in case the blacks get more weightage but the situation is vice versa with the whites, they are in the power position and does control the media and as a result it is understood that the media will give more importance to the whites and as we have already seen that the media plays an important role in shaping our persona ; hence media can be called a very important constituent of our social life. On the other hand the presence of racial or ethnic minorities in our society is an indispensable reality. Therefore the proper representation of minorities by the media can create a lot of difference in our mind sets because we have already learnt that the media shapes what we think, what we feel and what we understand and hence adequate representation of the disadvantaged class might have bettered their situation. Unfortunately the mass media like the TV and the radio refrain from such a work, instead they misrepresent them and this is because it is still believed that the minorities that the minorities or the Blacks do not have the equal rights as the whites and so they cannot be represented at par with the whites, it is absolutely just and a accepted practice that the Blacks will not be properly represented in the media because it is the hegemony of the whites and the Blacks are bound to accept it.  References: 1. Alia V, Bull S, 2005,   Media and ethnic minorities, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2. Dijk A, 1991, Racism and the press, Routledge, London. 3. Dines, G. and Humez, J.M. 2002, Gender, race, and class in media, SAGE 4. Ebert, R. 2005, Roger Eberts Movie Yearbook 2006, NJ: Andrews McMeel Publishing 5. Eitzen, D.S. 2006. Fair and Foul, Colorado: Rowman & Littlefield 6. Haggis, P. and Moresco, B. (director), B. Fraser and S. Bullock (perfs), 2005, Crash, Lions Gate Entertainment, USA &Germany 7. Ungerleider, C. 1991, Media, Minorities, and Misconceptions: The Portrayal by and Representation of Minorities in Canadian News Media, Media Awareness Network, available at: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/articles/diversity/misconceptions.cfm (accessed on May 19, 2009) 8. Vargaftig, M, 1997, Cultural rights, the media and minorities: report of the seminar held in Strasbourg, Council of Europe Read More