ABSTRACT
This chapter provides social scientific evidence demonstrating that stereotypical news portrayals shape perceptions of stigmatized groups. Mediated stereotypes reinforce news viewers’ conceptions of various racial groups and the roles they occupy. Despite the slight updates and changes in news portrayals, overall the media tend to promote gross stereotypes of various racial groups. Cognitive accessibility suggests that people use mental shortcuts to make relevant social judgments. So, someone encountering something or someone related to the stereotype might make a judgment about that person based on repeated exposure to the stereotype. Exposure to racialized crime news reinforces stereotypes of Black people, through a process of cognitive accessibility. Black people are associated with crime, poverty, and social instability. The news focuses on Black and Brown criminals who harm White victims; negative pretrial publicity was more likely to be aired on TV news when the perpetrator was Black or Brown and the victim was White.
