ABSTRACT

In the case of media offerings, which must involve race in an increasingly diverse America, the ante of audience perception rises and the keepers of the media gates—most of whom are from the white, male “mainstream”—tense up. In 1947, the Hutchins Commission report on A Free and Responsible Press urged the news media to promote public discussions on important issues and to help ensure that all community elements have opportunities to express their views. Part of the alienation from mainstream media found in South Central Los Angeles, Harlem, the South Side of Chicago and other racially and culturally bounded neighborhoods springs form a distrust learned of experience. “The offering pattern has African Americans disproportionately included in negative coverage—as prostitutes, drug dealers, welfare recipients, second-story men, unwed mothers,” observed Newsday’s Les Payne. In America, the negative images of African Americans and other minorities that evolve in society in general and in the media in particular images most people accept as authentic.