During this Presidential election we have heard the words "The media is biased" and the "the media is rigging the election" over and over again. It is in every headline on every news station. People on Facebook are starting fights over it and all hell has broken loose on Twitter. However, there is a MUCH larger media bias that most people are uninformed about and it's not being talked about nearly enough.
What we don't realize every night when we turn on our TV to watch the news or look at the local news online is how over represented crimes by Black men are in the news. African American's only make up 16% of the US population, but make up almost half of the US prison population. This is horrifying and is its own issue in itself when it comes to policing. But it could be due to a chicken egg type of situation about how African Americans are perceived in the media.
Many people often say that Black men look like "thugs" however that is how the media decides to portray them. One thing we do not take into account before making these judgement is the difference in social media culture. Often times media outlets will use the Facebook picture of the individual they are reporting on, but what we don't think about is how different races have different norms of social media. Often times white men use pictures of them in their fraternity, or dressed up in work clothes for their profile picture, while Black men are more likely to have a picture of them looking what they would call "tough" or "masculine". Black men are less likely to make a profile picture of themselves smiling because that is just not what is praised in most circles. We all post a picture based on what we think our followers will praise because we live in a generation of a need for others to praise us. This is why we need to stop using the pictures in which are on our Facebook and allow the family/community of the individual to pick the picture given to the media. If a person goes missing we do not use their mug shot, so we should not use them for the unarmed black men being shot by cops. We need a standard of photos which will be used for all races, not making Black men look like criminals on the news while we make white men who commit the same crimes to look like angels.
Black men are over represented in the media. We are made to believe that black men are the ones committing 78% of assaults if we watch the nightly news. However, this is a VERY WRONG statistic, only 49% of assaults are committed by black men, meaning we are made to believe that they are the main group committing assaults, when in reality, black men and white men are committing assaults at almost the exact same rate. This is because we live in a world where we believe "If it Bleeds It leads." However, the over representation of black men being criminals on the news is fueling racism and diving our country everyday. Even if we do not realize it is happening, people are subconsciously becoming more afraid of black males on the street, which in turn has lead to the killing of unarmed black men. Many people say they are not racist by will still grab their purse closer to themselves when they pass a black man on the street. This is due to what the media is telling us about black males. We need to point out this inequality and force the news networks to report the news in a way that represents the real face of crime in the US. We need to have a standard in which we treat all of those who commit crimes on an even playing field. We need to stop the media from corrupting the minds of its watchers and force them to treat all those report on equally.
