Since when is the truth stereotyping? On Wednesday, October 18th., The Grio ran this headline, “Black people say a negative media stereotypes their community, racism plays a role“.
Nearly 40% of survey respondents said they see racist or racially insensitive news often.
Black people hold critical views of the media, which they say stereotypes their community and covers it more negatively, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
“There’s not a lot of African American coverage unless it’s February or it’s criminal,” one focus group participant told Pew.
Michael Lipka, the associate director of news and information research at Pew, said overall, Republicans harbor more media distrust than Democrats. But Black Americans distrust the media at the same rate regardless of their political preference.
Kim Smith, an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at North Carolina A&T, an HBCU, said the survey results do not surprise him.
Regarding how the media covers Black people, “The views are pretty similarly negative on both sides of the aisle,” Lipka told theGrio. “There’s not really much disagreement there. Even Black Republicans hold the view that there are a lot of problems with how the news media covers Black people.”
The survey of nearly 5,000 Black adults was conducted in late February and early March. According to the results, released on Sept. 26:
63% said news about Black people is often more negative than other ethnic or racial groups. 43% said news coverage largely stereotypes Black people.
Nearly four in 10 (39%) said they see racist or racially insensitive news fairly or extremely often. Only 6% of those surveyed said they believe they’re being fairly treated.
Focus group comments, sprinkled throughout the survey, drove home the point of distrust.
“I don’t know what to tell blacks, other than the truth isn’t stereotyping when it is based on facts”, said Thomas Robb, the National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan. “We’re not talking about the watermelon, grape soda, and chicken link here, this is serious. Here are some facts as to why the media may seem to ‘pick’ on blacks more than any other race. 13% of America’s population is black, they commit 56% of America’s crime. According to these statistics, any time a crime is committed in America, there’s a 56% chance that a black is committing it. That’s a huge number for only 13%. So when media runs articles, guess what? It’s more than likely going to be about black criminals. According to Hattery and Smith, 25-33% percent of African men are in jails or prison, and Thomas, Kampe and Newton say 28% of black children have absentee fathers, so when black families are portrayed as fatherless, it really is a fact. As far as education goes, on average, a black has an IQ of 70. That’s borderline retarded. So when blacks are portrayed as not so educated, growing up without a father, and turning to crime instead of work, it’s not stereotypical at all. It is facts”.