The Color TV of Fear

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

"Obsessive coverage of urban crime by local television stations, UCLA law professor Jerry Kang argued in the Harvard Law Review ... is one of the engines driving lingering racism in the United States. So counterproductive is local broadcast news, he says, that it is time the FCC stopped using the number of hours a station devotes to local news as evidence of the station's contribution to the 'public interest,' which has traditionally been a requirement for a broadcast license." Kang cites psychological research that racist assumptions linking people of color with violence and crime are weakened, after "footage of a respected black figure like Bill Cosby or Martin Luther King, Jr." is viewed. Local TV news reinforces racist stereotypes, Kang argues, pointing to a 13-month study of Los Angeles stations that found crime stories led broadcasts "51 percent of the time and took up 25 percent of total newscast minutes."

Main Source: 
Boston Globe, May 22, 2005
Topics: 
Media
Race / Ethnic Issues
Social Justice

Comments

h caines replied on

This is the one that you should have chosen for today. Real fathers who are not treated like real men. On father's day, I should be noted as the only father who has fought the long journey of 10 years to be the custodial parent of his children, but do not have them with me and paying child support to a dead beat mother. To define deadbeat, is to say a person who avoids working to keep from paying support. If you ever want to see an unworthy use of the court system in Wisconsin, investigate this. Family court case 96FA002179 and 96FA001474. This under the divorce order where Dane County thinks it is fit for four preteen and teenage children from three different fathers to live with a woman on section 8 in a two bedroom apartment. The real concern here is this woman is a true alcoholic and drug user. In spiteful means is using the free reign she has of appointed case workers and counsel to swindle money out of a person who has legal custody and placement of these children to support her habit. To use her children and status to avoid paying utility and other bills in the winter, because under the county or state rule of service can't be turned off or evicted in the winter months. How ironic is this? Imagine a father who lives in Florida with his children and they come to Wisconsin to visit their mother that would not see them for two years and she doesn't send them back. She calls her case worker who automatically starts an old support order without asking the father. Now, he is stuck to defend himself long distance or take the chance of coming to Wisconsin to be arrested for not paying. The court loses my documents for getting the children back, but has hers which are filed by her guardian ad litem. Isn't the guardian ad litem to find the "best interest" of the children? How can you do that if you don't know the environment in which they live. I am sorry for the long response. But, if you want a noteworthy story. Tell this story of the military veteran who has been to Libya and the Persian Gulf, who can't have his family because of the system that he fought to protect. What good is it to be alive from the war, when you have no family to come back home to.I know many veterans that can attest to that. Lester Shields