In the third week of the 2023 USC Annenberg Youth Media, we briefly focused on the critical media production. Unfortunately, we only got to cover most concepts shortly, however Professor was still able to give us major information. He got into detail about the stereotypes in the media and how the media potrays certain races. Given this information, I was beyond shocked.
Over the past few years, Protesting has become such a huge movement that has been arising. Protesting is when a large group of people unite together in the streets of the public in order to adress a social issue. One of the most popular protest in this decade is the “Black Lives Matter” movement. This was caused by the death of George Floyd that occured on march 15, 2020. However, according to the media this was NOT a protest.
Live televesion news, social media, and newspaper rather potrayed this protest as a RIOT. Due to the protest being held by the black community, it now changes the way how the media potrays the situation. There had been more peaceful protests than violent ones but somehow the media still only shows the negative side of the movement.
“Thugs, gangsters, animals”, and many more disturbng names were used to describe the black community protesting. The media has no right to call any individual that name but since it is a person of color, they feel they have a right to. At this point, they are describing them as nonliving people but more of a creature. Apparently, only the African Americans deserve this treatment.
When you compare black protests and white protests, they are not the same in terms of media. The labeling given to one differentiates significantly. When the whites commit the same or even worse acts in protests, they are not described the same as the blacks. Instead, they are given way lesser wicked names such as ” young people, rowdy kids, and children”. As you can see, it is not the same nicknames.
The media justified their acts instead of giving them the same categorization as the others. In addition, the protests were actually still labeled as a “Protest” instead of a riot even when commiting more awful wicked acts. It just isn’t right how the media potrays both sides due to race. This has been a major problem over the last few years.
Rioting. Protesting. There’s a huge difference. When a community comes together to peacefully argue against the challenges and inequalities in today’s political system, that’s protesting. However, when we begin to see groups of people running around, starting fires, looting, and breaking stuff, that is rioting. Even if there had been some bit of rioting, there had been more peaceful protests overall. The portrayal of the media is very unfair and one sided, it should not really be like this. In summary, media representation of race is very harming to society and is very surprising the government allows such things as this when overall, people just want to address social issues peacefully.
Communicating Change 