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The media does cover middle and upper income blacks.
They are: Beyonce, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Kanye West etc.
They don't represent normal, middle class Blacks. Come to think about it, the media usually only reports on Blacks if their some superstar actor/actress or rapper or if their poverty-stricken gang members/welfare types. Maybe once in a while you'll see an exception but that is part of mainstream media norms.
Which is interesting because during the 90s the crime rate in America was very high compared to today.
Not really...... most people don't believe that because there are much different ways of reporting crime now. Its all about politics and getting people back in the cities and lying about crime is a good way to accomplish that
Heck, most people in the cities and the ghetto don't even call police any more
Course the government would always tell us the truth ..... right
And here is the best explanation thus far: It doesn't sell. No one really cares about The Huxtables. They only care about some street, ghetto youth, acting a fool, breaking windows and shooting people. THAT sells newspapers and makes news stories.
Considering the economic state of America's newspapers, I wouldn't be so quick to point out what newspapers thought sold newspapers.
NEVER use a rapper such as Kanye West as an example of creating music which appeals to upper-income and upper-class blacksupper-class blacks; they make tons of $$$ and are certainly very well off financially, but given the extremely narrow appeal of rap music in the USA over the past decade and its declining numbers both in radio listening levels and CD sales.
The overwhelming majority of rap station listeners nationwide are under 35 years of age, and that's been the case for well over 25 years, as a peek at station ratings will quickly show.
CHR/Rhythmic stations (that's the industry term) do very well with 12-34 year old listeners, except in cities where the local rap station is an also-ran in the ratings after 15+ years as the #1 radio station in the city (Washington, DC) or in a city where the local rap station abandoned the format and switched to top 40 (Chicago).
It's only the eighth most listened to format in the nation these days, and has never been higher than sixth over the past quarter-century.
The media's coverage of impoverished and gun-toting African-Americans is indeed reprehensible (including the sickening TV show entitled 'Cops'), but there's an old saying in the TV industry regarding local newscasts---'If it bleeds, it leads'.
Translation; if the story involves a shooting involving African-Americans, rest assured that it will open your hometown's local newscast, morning, noon and night.
Good question because it's pretty obvious that the mainstream media is also pushing the very same agenda that harms the people of the inner city the most. They're not trying to educate or look for solutions. The mainstream media will never ever criticize policies like NAFTA, globalism, and open borders that make for high unemployment especially in the inner cities. The mainstream media will never analyze the culture of welfare handouts or single mothers.
Besides, blacks are heavily over represented in television as it is in proportion to their total population in the U.S. anyway. I think Asians and Hispanics should be getting more media coverage. They're the immigrant populations of this century anyway. We've got more hispanics in the US than we have blacks yet blacks are shown on television more. That doesn't make sense.
And when was the last time you saw and asian man or woman in an advert on teleivion? Or even on the internet for that matter.
Blacks have had their spotlight, it's time for them to scooch over and let others have the show.
They cover events and write stories about society in general. My point is, they could incorporate stories about middle and upper income blacks. Why is the primary focus only on low income blacks?
Because... Just like with their "TEA Party folks are racist" theme, this one fits "their" (the media's) narrative.
Why does the mainstream media mostly focus on low income/inner city African American behavior? I tend to read a wide variety of papers online, which includes: the NY times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution, CNN, Washington Times, and L.A. Times, just to name a few... Unfortunately, while reading these papers, I've noticed a very unsettling trend.
In a nutshell, I've noticed that much of the media (both liberal and conservative sources) rarely cover stories relating to middle and upper income black lifestyles, which focus on fitness, travel, weddings/relationships, entrepreneurship, education, retirement, investing etc. The only stories that blacks consistently appear in --are stories about crime, welfare, affirmative action, out of wedlock children, unemployment, and almost any other negative issue.
Even when there's an opportunity to write something positive, the media tends to over-ride it. In April for example, many of the papers had articles about the rise in suicide rates. Some papers however chose not to include the full facts pertaining to particularly high rates of suicide among white men and the relatively low rate of suicide exhibited by black women. Most of the stories did not break down the suicide rates by race. They simply reported the number of suicides under the "American" umbrella or by gender. In all honesty, this is fine, but one has to ask why don't they take the same approach when reporting crime, or any other negative issues?
In my opinion, the lack of positive media representation aids in the overall negative perception of African Americans, because people are more prone to associate low income behavior with overall African American "culture," because they only see negative portrayals of black life.
I'm curious if you agree with my observations?
What I was taught in a one semester Journalism class was that papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post are de facto national newspapers. Smaller papers like the Milwaukee Journal are local papers. A lot of local papers will get national stories from the likes of the New York Times.
Why that has any relevance is because the papers of smaller cities should be primarily concerned with covering local stories. In other words, aside from national stories on "blacks," a paper like the Milwaukee Journal should report on news stories pertaining to blacks in Milwaukee and not in Chicago or other cities. But again, unless it's a national story about blacks.
But then there are certain values or criteria reporters and editors are supposed to look for that distinguishes something as "news."
Things like:
Timeliness (e.g., anniversary of some event).
Conflict.
Disaster.
Prominence (big name people, institutions).
Novelty (newness: e.g., first black president, first gay marriage).
Sex.
Proximity.
Human Interest stories.
With the exception of human interest stories and editorial pieces, news is supposed to be written in a certain style that includes attribution (naming the source--rarely do you want an "unnamed source"), providing the facts, clear wording that does not "lead" a reader to making a judgment (e.g., don't use words like "evil" or "accused of shockingly horrible...").
U.S. journalism is thought to have declined a great deal in the last few decades. It's thought to be a form--today--of propaganda using the form of persuasive writing. And This criticism is not aimed just at the written press or liberals but at TV/cable news and conservatives. The whole concept of "conservative news" (like I think Fox brands itself) is necessarily a violation of objective journalism.
Some of the most egregiousness journalism in recent times has been aimed at the Catholic Church. I've seen national news stories on yahoo on some obscure Catholic figure (this should recall the value of "prominence") not even 99% of Catholics outside of X city must even know exists, speaking about some secret romance he's had with some guy. That would be like a report on some obscure Imam in Turkey having a romance with some Turkish guy that makes national news in the U.S.
And U.S. Journalism has had a love affair of refraining from attribution and sidelining facts for emotive words like "boy" instead of giving the facts of age. "Boy" can conjure up images of a 9 year old rather than a 17 year old. And both professional journalists and editors know this.
I bring that up about that institution (which I will grant journalism that the Catholic Church falls under the news value of "prominence") in this thread about black people as something of a "case example" and for purposes of contrast and comparison.
Some reporting on Black-Americans seems to be geared towards propaganda and the stoking of prejudice. One has to determine if there are stylistic and value violations occurring in either the local or national reporting on Black-Americans (or black Africans in Africa too).
I would say locally Milwaukee's journalism of the inner-city and of local blacks irrespective of their socioeconomic background tends to be good. With respects to printed journalism about local coverage I'm pretty impressed with the Milwaukee Journal which might be one of the best papers in the country in this respects. Supposedly, during the 1980s that paper had went down hill--and barely even covered local news, and more importantly did little to no investigative journalism of local events and institutions etc.
As a "side bar" to this issue. While UW-Milwaukee is no Harvard and no UW-Madison, and while some of it;s colleges and schools within it's university might not be all that great (some are very good), relatively speaking, I suspect it might be a leader or ahead of the curve in certain "urban education" respects. It's stellar report it produced on the state of black Milwaukee economically, and comparing local black unemployment to maybe 2 dozen other cities with their black unemployment figures, seems to have been very big news nationally. That report has been quoted numerous times on black blogs and in published articles across the nation.
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