Race and Media Research

It is, therefore, to easy that people around the world differ in skin color as well as facial stature. There are groups of people who are often tall while another group of people is relatively short. Races include American Indian, African, Asian, European, Australian aborigine, Micronesian as well as Polynesian among others. Media implies the communication channels whereby the news, education, entertainment in addition to any promotional messages were disseminated. It entails several mediums such as televisions, magazines, billboards, newspapers, email, and internet among other just to mention but a few. The racial perceptions of crime as described by the media have often ruined the criminal justice system leading to poor misinterpretation of the laws. News about crime has been giving a blow to the white individuals giving them an idea to believe that the minority groups are crime puppets.

The distortions of race have often been pervasive to the news related to crime. According to a study that was carried out in Los Angeles, approximately 37% of the suspected persons in the media concerned with the crime have been blacks and more than twenty-one percent of them are often being arrested in the city. The disparities of the black and whites exist within the United States and especially when the race is taken into account. Media has been the biggest influence of racism in the modern society. Through bias described by the media targeting some common groups of people, it is assumed that these groups in the real sense are worst even without any empirical evidence (Brian, 2013:125). The American media industry had been dominated by the whites and therefore they were entitled to select the kind of images of the black people that they wanted to portray.

In the media advertisements, the word ‘black’ is often repeated hence giving a criminal aspect due to the connotation that is associated with it. The media has often criminalized the activities of the black people and represent them as violent. In the Birth of Nation film in 1915 and later the Tarzan series of 1932, the black communities have been depicted as rapists, thieves, savage and ignorant among other negative blackmail that made the less knowledgeable to consider the new media information as final. As elaborated by Entaman (2010), it was even clear that those white men who acted in movies to represent the blacks were, of course, describing the bad nature of the blacks which was very symbolic to the audience. Since then, the black people have been depicted to be less knowledgeable and lacked the talent to carry out their daily activities similar to the white men.

The whites who took parts in the early films, therefore, described that they were the only capable group to be involved in the mainstream media. This aspect of the media, therefore, raised the concept of separation of races between the blacks and whites. The media approach of some social issues been so ethnic as opposed to being neutral. Media reports in most cases tend to revolve around some political and social issues. According to Mcllwain (2011), the descriptions of the newspapers in the 2008 presidential elections in America were so ethnic in nature. The issues of race, in this case, were repeatedly discussed in the course of the election (Mcllwain, 2011:380). Conclusion The media had been favoring the majority groups and branding the minority groups as criminals and unknowledgeable.

References Brian Powell. Media Matters for America: Fox News' Racial Crime Coverage Is Hurting People. Canada. Secretary of State. The guidelines on the depiction of visible minorities in government communications. M. Modern Racism and the Images of Blacks in Local Television News. Critical Studies In Mass Communication, 7(4). Happer, C. Philo, G.