Exerpted and adapted from a draft report on a Conference on Race and the Press held in Washington, D.C., June 28, 2001, sponsored by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The impacts of the media on race relations have become, perhaps for the first time since the landmark Kerner Report of 1968 (Report, 1968), matters of public controversy. Several forces have converged to place media and race on the public agenda. First, President Clinton’s Initiative on Race (1997-98), although foreshortened by the controversies that engulfed the administration in its latter years, stimulated frank public discussion of race across the country. More recently, several scholarly books written with a broader audience in mind have investigated the nexus of race and media (Entman & Rojecki, 2000; Gilens, 1999; Jacobs, 2000; and Mendelberg, 2001). The 2000 Election, with its disputes over disparate treatment of African American and Hispanic versus Anglo voters in the decisive state of Florida (and elsewhere, see Income, 2001), also drew attention to power differentials among groups and the media’s role in sustaining them. In addition, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has placed improving media images of blacks near the top of its agenda, and other ethnic organizations have followed suit. For example, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) listed among its legislative agenda items for 2001 the “positive portrayal of Hispanics and their culture” by the media, and states that it “encourage[s] the FCC to require broadcasters to provide better programing for Latinos” (LULAC, 2001). Finally, data from the 2000 U.S. Census point to an even greater than expected acceleration in the ethnic diversity of the country (Grieco & Cassidy, 2001). What can scholars of political communication contribute to the public dialogue?

Framing the Issues for Journalism

The professional norms of journalism, and the standard operating procedures that implement these norms (Gans, 1979, provides the most influential and comprehensive overview of the enduring values and operating procedures of 20th century American journalism) have unintended consequences for race relations in America. Arguably, the literature identifies four norms at the core of American journalism:

1. Follow the power: the activities of powerful government institutions should take highest priority in news judgments.

2. Report objectively: In answering the standard “Who, What, When, Where, Why” questions, provide equivalent treatment to the sides in disputes, and avoid injecting substantive personal judgments into stories.

3. Ensure accuracy through institutional corroboration: Ensure that factual assertions designed to answer the five questions are validated by credible institutions or witnesses (court records, police statements, official reports).

4. Protect the bottom line: Report in accordance with the above three precepts, but accept the constraints and standard procedures established by the need to maintain profitability and satisfy legal requirements to stockholders.

Although perfectly understandable and in many ways useful, these norms and associated journalistic procedures, which took root in a much more homogeneous culture than that of 21st century America, may neglect important and sometimes paradoxical side effects of manufacturing and distributing news to a diverse public. These include the creation of a distorted profile of role models, the implanting and reinforcement of group stereotypes, and the undermining of long-term profitability. There may be some mismatch between the professional norms and institutionalized practices of news organizations rooted in a simpler and culturally, at least, relatively insular America society, and the culturally and ethnically heterogenous, globalizing American political economy of the 21st century.

For instance, if the normal daily routine of Washington journalism includes telling the audience what the president and his key subordinates are planning, proposing, and debating, and if the top, most newsworthy posts are occupied by whites, an inadvertent by-product of newsmaking will be a dearth of non-whites demonstrating competence and making major positive contributions to the nation’s business. For whites, longstanding cultural stereotypes and misunderstandings of non-whites readily enter such vacuums, reinforced by residential and social segregation that obstructs development of empathetic first-hand intimate relationships across group lines. The stereotypes are anything but objective and accurate.

A second example of the way that journalism’s governing norms, rooted in an unmindful assumption of a homogeneous, white (and largely Anglo-Saxon) culture can be found in the idea of accuracy. To those who allege that the local media devote far too much time and ink to street crime committed by blacks and others outside the dominant group, journalists can correctly respond that the disproportionate presence of such persons in crime stories merely reflects the higher than average crime rates of non-whites, as demonstrated by court records and government statistics. But there is much more to the story of crime by non-whites, much of it well-understood by journalists but poorly integrated into their reporting. Journalists know that there is a tremendous disparity between treatment of drug offenders who are white and those who are not, and they know that racial profiling persists. Both of these contextual facts inflate the arrest rates of non-whites, and ensure they are formally processed through the criminal justice system more frequently than whites.

Because of these and other factors, by defining newsworthy “crime” as those acts which result in the entry of the accused into police custody and the judicial process, journalists impart a racial skew to their crime coverage. The text of the crime stories may be accurate in themselves, they may be impartial, but they may promote inaccurate stereotypes in the thinking of many white persons who lack the contextual information and are also prone, for a host of psychological and social reasons, to engage in stereotyping (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Hurwitz & Peffley, 1998; and Sniderman, Tetlock & Carmines, 1993). And there may be a political result to the racial skewing of ostensibly accurate and objective reporting. Social scientists have now demonstrated repeatedly that subtle racial cues in news reports can alter whites’ political opinions and voting preferences, unbeknownst to them (see Mendelberg, 2001; Gilens, 1999; Gilliam, xxx, and Iyengar, 2000, and compare Kinder & Sanders, 1996). Thus can seemingly objective and accurate reporting contribute to the opposite of objectivity and accuracy: the promotion of a particular side in conflicts over race-related public policy and candidates, and the reinforcement of stereotyped generalizations about groups that are empirically invalid.

A third example is the concern with short-term profitability, which has until quite recently led most news enterprises to pitch their products to a least common denominator, an imagined consumer who is white and working or middle class. But between growing competition for audiences’ time, changing generations (a cohort of young people whose media experiences are dominated by video games, the internet, and cable channels like Comedy Central and MTV more than old fashioned print and television) and the changing ethnic composition of many metropolitan areas, most daily news operations confronted with declining circulation and ratings are recognizing the need to alter their habits. Still, those habits, embedded within the standard practices designed to fulfill the other three norms, die hard. White-dominated newsrooms cut off from ethnic and youth communities, following their standard news definitions and newsmaking processes, in some cases may be producing news of declining relevance to a secularly diminishing and disaggregating mass audience.

The media’s responses to market pressures can have both helpful and problematic effects on race relations. On the one hand, there appears to be a growing deployment of resources, especially in print media and on specialized cable channels, toward covering news of minority communities more frequency and with more depth. In this way, the news media are acting to protect their market positions while performing, perhaps, a service to democracy by incorporating groups traditionally left out on the margins of public discourse. On the other hand, white audiences may not pay much attention to (or even know about) these news niches (e.g., special sections or neighborhood editions of daily newspapers, ethnic magazines, or specialized shows on ethnic cable channels). Moreover, in considering the optimal moves for news organizations, both in terms of commercial success and of serving larger democratic goals, the issue of fragmenting and thus culturally segregating the audience along ethnic lines arises in bold relief. Segmenting the audience into ethnic enclaves may prove the most economically efficient, profit-generating solution for news operations (Turow, 1998). and may help to serve those groups’ information needs. But where that leaves the function of nourishing a common public sphere via truly mass media remains unclear.

To return to the question posed at the outset, political communication scholars have an opportunity in studying race/ethnicity and the media to illuminate with particular insight the intersection of forces that have long occupied the field: market forces, culture, professional (journalistic) norms and organizational routines, and public opinion. The market is speaking in more complex and insistent ways than ever to the news media (and entertainment media as well). The culture is becoming more diverse. These two factors pose challenges to the longstanding norms and routines governing the media. If political communication scholars seek to understand the implications of these changes for public opinion, they will be helping contribute to a larger public dialogue about the future of democratic citizenship in a multi-ethnic society.

References

“Income and Racial Disparities in the Undercount in the 2000 Presidential Election,” 2001. Report by the Minority Staff, Special Investigations Division, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives (July 9, 2001). Available on line: http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdf/electionsnationalstudy.pdf

Entman, Robert M., and Andrew Rojecki, 2000. The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gans, Herbert, 1979. Deciding What's News : A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. New York: Pantheon.

Gilens, Martin, 1999. Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Grieco, Elizabeth, and Rachel Cassidy, 2001. “Race and Hispanic Origin.” U.S. Census Bureau (March). Available on line: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-1.pdf

Hurwitz, Jon, and Mark Peffley, eds., 1998. Perception and Prejudice: Race and Politics in the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gilliam, F.D., and Shanto Iyengar, 2000. “Prime suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public.” American Journal of Political Science 44 : 560 - 573.

Jacobs, Ronald N., 2000. Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kinder, Donald E., and Lynn Sanders, 1996. Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals. Chicago: Unviersity of Chicago Press.

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 2001. “2001 Legislative Platform.” Available on line: http://www.lulac.org/Issues/Platform.html

Mendelberg, Tali, 2001. The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages and the Norm of Equalty. Princeton: Princeton Uniersity Press.

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Cvil Disorders. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.

Sidanius, Jim, and Felicia Pratto, 1999. Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sniderman, Paul M., Philip E. Tetlock, and Edward G. Carmines, 1993. Prejudice, Politics, and the American Dilemma. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Turow, Joseph, 1998. Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.