Effect of News Media Presentation of Blacks - Research Paper Example

This study raises the possibility that a number of unexplored processes intrinsic in stereotypical depictions of Blacks in the news media contribute to the impairing of social judgment. This study indicates that the effects of negative news media presentations of Blacks on young Black males’ perceptions of their own identities merit serious attention specifically in light of the rise of television news programs.

This dissertation argues that the negative perceptions of many young black males of their own identities are constructed to a significant extent by the mass media, particularly the news media (Entman & Rojecki 2001). The media appears preoccupied with a controversial idea that emerged particularly in the 1970s with the appearance of ‘blaxploitation films’: “that there is a ‘black pathology,’ a fundamental weakness in African American families that can be traced to their experiences as slaves” (Rome 2004: 5). For instance, the news media have set a trend in associating young black males with violence, lawlessness, and aggressiveness (Coover 2001). Similarly, the entertainment media have willingly received their prompt from the members of the press, and these inaccurate representations not merely shape race relations but also generate a self-fulfilling prophecy for young black males, whose limitations of achievement can be fixed for them by presentations in the media (Johnson, Adams, Hall, & Ashburn 1997).

            Even though Black news journalists and principal characters have been steadily growing in number, the significant majority of decision-makers in the media remain White (Martin 2008). Specifically, influences of race that are not being exercised have been a grave issue in the Black community because it impinges on the essence of media content that infiltrates society and its members (Larson 2005). For instance, the commonness of detrimental images of Black men as offenders in newspapers has been controversial (Rome 2004). The connection between criminality and blackness is established by concepts such as ‘black crime’ and ‘black-on-black crime’ (Coover 2001: 413).