понедельник, 30 ноября 2015 г.

When the media misrepresents black men, the effects are felt in the real world.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/12/media-misrepresents-black-men-effects-felt-real-world

The headline of the article I have read is “When the media misrepresents black men, the effects are felt in the real world”. The article is published in “The Guardian”.  It is written by Leigh Donaldson. The article is devoted to a negative influence of mass media on an image of black men. The author starts by telling the reader that the lives of black men in the US is affected by negative public perceptions. They are often turned away from jobs, regularly treated by police as dangerous suspects. The article goes on to say that all of these negative portrayals not only help create barriers to advancement within our society, but also “make these positions seem natural and inevitable”.
 Further the author reports that he made a study of two metropolitan Detroit dailies’ coverage of the 1967 urban riots. He make conclusion that the print media misrepresentations of facts and poorly substantiated claims about particulars of acts of violence towards people of color. He remarks that since the 1970s the treatment to black people hasn't exchanged. 

According to the article the stereotypes of African-American men such as drug-related crime, unemployment and poverty are represented in the media. Too often a spectrum of human qualities are very limited. Prowess in sports, physical achievement in general and musicality are emphasized inordinately. Common role models depicted by the media such as rap or hip-hop stars and basketball players imply limited life choices. Many important dynamics that affect black lives don’t often make it to the presses or the screens.

All of these media misrepresentations influence the black people and create problematic attitudes in audiences. People who have never interacted with a black people trust what the media tells them. But the most negative impact is upon black individuals themselves. Black boys and men actually internalize biases and stereotypes and, through their behavior, reinforce the misrepresentations. The author consider that such people become victims of perception. Also the fact that perspectives of African-American male population worsen cultural division among all people, for example, it enables companies to deny jobs, banks to decline loans and the police to shoot indiscriminately, is stressed.
The author comes to the conclusion that the media can and should choose words, images and news angles that give a fuller, more nuanced image of African-American men, as well as black history, culture and life in America, as a whole. People of color are individuals, not types.
I found the article rather interesting and useful. Firstly, such misrepresents influence the attitude of the Russian people to black men and to people of other race. Such problem exists not only in the English-speaking countries but also we have it too. Secondly, such stereotypes violate rights of people of other nationalities and colures. Finally, both America and Russia try to build the democratic state. And the author touches upon the one of the most important issue of the present. Mass media can help but at the same time can do much harm to the society. Moreover, I found this article useful because the author offers solutions of this problem.


Do you trust to mass media? Does such problem exist in your country? What solutions of this problem do you see?

1 комментарий:

  1. Mass media play a crucial role in forming public opinion. The power of mass media is much stronger than they think. They build up public images of political figures and thrust their opinion on everybody. They are constantly presenting objects suggesting what individuals in the mass should think about, know about and have feelings about. And, as a matter of fact, people just do not have a possibility to think about it, to make their own inference from some event or a fact. They do not need to think, because mass media analyse the situation instead of them. This is the way the public opinion is formed. The most terrible thing is that the similar estimate can be the reason of international wars and inland conflicts, where the civilians can suffer.To escape the total enslavement by mass media, people should take a critical view of the information they receive, they need to have their own opinion.

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