According to CNN.com, the first detection of tainted water in Flint, Michigan occurred in August of 2014 when the city issued “a boil water advisory for a neighborhood on the west side of Flint.” On November 12, 2016, The Guardian reports that Judge David Lawson ordered clean water distribution to homes without a filter. The Flint Water Crisis has spanned just over two years with many residents still rightfully questioning the quality of their drinking water. The crisis was ignored by city, state, and federal elected officials. Julie Bosman, of The New York Times, reports that “E.P.A. officials had enough information and authority to issue an emergency order under the Safe Drinking Water Act as early as June 2015.” In July of 2015, however, CNN documented that the city attorney continued to insist that a lawsuit filed by clergy and activists was “baseless” and the case was dismissed in September of last year.

The Flint Water Crisis has caused many people to question how such a drastic emergency situation could go ignored by government officials for so long. Even as Flint residents were bringing bottles of tainted water to town meetings, the city continued to ignore their desperation. The Flint Water Crisis has been able to be ignored for so long because images of cities like Flint have fallen out of mainstream media attention. CNN reports that 41.6 percent of Flints residents live below the poverty line and that the median household income for the city is $24,408 less than the median for Michigan residents. CNN also reports that Flint’s population is 56.6 percent African-American. The inequality in Flint is largely related to the downsizing of the General Motors plant in the city.

Flint, therefore, is a city that fits the requirements of a postindustrial ghetto, an image that the media simultaneously ignores and is fascinated with. During the 90s, a series of ghetto-action films explored these spaces as a way to protest the absence of poor, predominantly black cities from the mainstream media. Popular films such as Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society are a part of this genre. Film scholar, Paula J. Masood, explores in her article, “Mapping the Hood: The Genealogy of City Space in ‘Boyz N the Hood’ and ‘Menace II Society,’” how the bleak economic conditions portrayed in these films are a reflection of the factory closings that affected the films city settings. She suggests that these films emerged as a way to counter the relentlessly wealthy and positive images of cities, such as LA, that dominant mainstream Hollywood and, as I argue, media discourse.

While these films attempted to bring attention to the poverty that plagues poor cities, they ultimately failed due to their marketing campaigns. Film scholar, Amanda Klein contests in her article, “Not Only Screen but the Projector as Well,” that the marketing campaigns for these films muted their political content in favor of promoting the allure of sex, drugs, and violence to their target audience, white male teenagers. These films glamorized gangsta life in order to codify it into mainstream Hollywood images and, once audiences grew tired of the genre, they dropped the postindustrial ghetto altogether. The structural injustices that directors were trying attention to still exist in postindustrial ghettos across the nation. America is still ignoring poverty.

A similar situation is occurring with the coverage of Flint. Major news conglomerates are ignoring the water crisis in favor of covering entertaining and dominant images of American life. Mainstream news outlets are more interested in forcing the American public to keep up with the Kardashians and Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade against SNL than covering an actual national crisis. For the past week, my Facebook trending news monitor has promoted celebrities, such as Madonna, Lady Gaga, and the Kardashian Family, rather than articles covering Flint.

Fortunately Americans can fight back against this selective news coverage. By sharing, tweeting, and promoting articles about Flint we can force the water crisis into trending news monitors across social media outlets. If media conglomerates and politicians see this demand something will be done. Standing Rock activists were able to gain enough attention to receive real change. Let’s turn our attention to Flint this time around.