Is the media racially biased?

[Roland of Gilead]

It seems the media will withhold the race of an individual if they are not white and commit a crime but will put their race in bold if they are white and commit a crime.

A very recent example is the guy in the Jag who just killed a protester in Seattle with his car.   You just about cannot find out his race by searching the stories but it turns out he is a black guy.

The same crime by a white person and it would be "White male strikes and kills protestor in Seattle"

What is it that makes the media biased and is it really healthy for the country to have this bias?

[ender]

Uh what?

This is just trollbait.

[Roland of Gilead]

Uh what?

This is just trollbait.

How is it trolling to want a fair discussion of treatment of race in the media?

[ender]

Uh what?

This is just trollbait.

How is it trolling to want a fair discussion of treatment of race in the media?

Is the media racially biased?

Leading question.

It seems the media will withhold the race of an individual if they are not white and commit a crime but will put their race in bold if they are white and commit a crime.

Not remotely an unbiased statement.

A very recent example is the guy in the Jag who just killed a protester in Seattle with his car.   You just about cannot find out his race by searching the stories but it turns out he is a black guy.

The same crime by a white person and it would be "White male strikes and kills protestor in Seattle"

What is it that makes the media biased and is it really healthy for the country to have this bias?

Seems like an attempt to say "but this time the media may have been biased!" without any acknowledgement of history. Or really any claim other than literally a single article (which was not even linked in the post).

You don't see how your post comes across as trolling?

[Roland of Gilead]

You are right, I do need examples.  I will start linking them as I find them.  It may be that it is just my biased perception but I do think I have been seeing a much larger identification of race when the race is white as opposed to non-white in news stories.

[ctuser1]

EVERYONE is racially biased. That is just human nature!!

The best available concepts for human cognition represent the operation of the human mind as a knowledge network. Every time you see or hear a black/brown dude committing a crime, your brain associates those two nodes ("black/brown" and "crime") in it's knowledge network a little closer.

Did you know that undocumented immigrants have a lower crime rate than native born? Will you be able to tell that from looking at the mainstream media?

Media is just selling what will sell, no more and no less. It is on each individual to recognize that EVERY single human being, black/brown/yellow/white, is racially biased because that is literally how human brain operates, and make sure that biological imperative does not cloud your logical judgement.

the above it why I don't think it is a good idea to impose "cancel culture" on people who are being "one time dicks" our of ignorance who subsequently understand the limitation of their human brain and actively seek to overcome their bias.
 

[GuitarStv]

Is the media racially biased?


Almost every study I can find would indicate, yes.  Yes it is.  But not in the way described in the initial post.  The bias seems overwhelmingly to be anti-black, not against whites.

https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/dangerous-distortion-considering-media-racial-bias
https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Race-and-Punishment.pdf
https://nca.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10646179609361727#.XwM-OihKjRY
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/93396/1/cesifo_wp4675.pdf
https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1478&context=msw_papers

[sherr]

You mean like black people "looting" supplies and white people "finding" supplies during Hurricane Katrina?

Oh wait that goes against your narrative, so of course this is not an "example" that you will post as you "find" it.

Agreed with other posters, this is clearly a troll post. Or, worse, a blatant dishonest attempt to spread misinformation / outright propaganda in order to support OP's politicians of choice.

[Roland of Gilead]

I don't really have a politician of choice.  I am voting Biden but not super happy about it.

[Roland of Gilead]

I think perhaps there are two things going on.

1)  If the crime is racially motivated, such as when these white trump supporters defaced a black lives matter mural, the media will put the offender's race in the title.

"A white man, woman vandalized a Black Lives Matter mural on July 4, called racism 'a leftist lie,' California police say"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/05/california-police-white-people-vandalized-black-lives-matter-mural/5381285002/

2)  If it is unclear what the motivation of the offender was, like the Jaguar striking and killing the protestors, the media will refrain from putting in the race of the offender.

"1 killed, 1 injured after car hits protesters on closed Seattle highway"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/04/seattle-freeway-protest-two-injured-car/5375164002/

[Tyler durden]

The media is politically biased which means they are in turn racially biased. Any story that portrays BLM in a negative light or illegal immigration in a negative light goes against their preferred narrative

Newsrooms are something like 90% left leaning. They hate trump and republicans with the heat of a thousand suns. Their not going to go out of their way to make his case for him or risk being attacked by the woke mob.

Just 7% of journalists are republicans.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/just-7-percent-of-journalists-are-republicans-thats-far-less-than-even-a-decade-ago/%3foutputType=amp

[sherr]

I don't really have a politician of choice.  I am voting Biden but not super happy about it.

Fine, I'm perfectly happy to accept that statement at face value and without question.

But this is still an inherently trollish post that has no redeeming value.

If you are specifically looking for and only posting cases where there is a perceived anti-white slant to news articles, then of course that is what you're going to perceive. It's the same thing as Trumpers only asking other Trumpers who's going to win in November, and then claiming that "all the polls are biased" because they don't reflect the same preferences. If you want to have an honest discussion about media bias, then find some actual studies on the subject that look at everything, and post those.

[GuitarStv]

As mentioned, I haven't been able to find any studies or research done that shows the media is biased against white people.  I'd be happy to review any you've found Roland.

[Roland of Gilead]

As mentioned, I haven't been able to find any studies or research done that shows the media is biased against white people.  I'd be happy to review any you've found Roland.

I have not either, which could mean either I suck at finding stuff or the media is in fact NOT biased against white people.  It also may be that recently the media is being extra careful to not be portrayed as being biased against black people but historically has been biased against black people.

[J Boogie]

I think media companies are becoming increasingly incentivized to put out stories that will be shared throughout social media.

I think the bias is incidentally racially biased, but more to the point, it is biased toward the most profitable emotion for them - outrage.

Many in my feed tend to post stuff that makes them mad so they can condemn it and raise awareness about how racism is real. News stories that play into this are very profitable.

It's kind of like how most movies and stories follow a certain formula with archetypes. If they don't follow the formula, it takes more critical thinking for us to make sense of it.

[GuitarStv]

As mentioned, I haven't been able to find any studies or research done that shows the media is biased against white people.  I'd be happy to review any you've found Roland.

I have not either, which could mean either I suck at finding stuff or the media is in fact NOT biased against white people.  It also may be that recently the media is being extra careful to not be portrayed as being biased against black people but historically has been biased against black people.

So . . . your concern is that in the last couple months many types of media are trying hard to avoid the anti-black bias they are historically known for and this has possibly caused overreach?

[sherr]

As mentioned, I haven't been able to find any studies or research done that shows the media is biased against white people.  I'd be happy to review any you've found Roland.

I have not either, which could mean either I suck at finding stuff or the media is in fact NOT biased against white people.  It also may be that recently the media is being extra careful to not be portrayed as being biased against black people but historically has been biased against black people.

So . . . your concern is that in the last couple months many types of media are trying hard to avoid the anti-black bias they are historically known for and this has possibly caused overreach?

I think he is actually coming around to answering his own question (if the media is anti-white racist), and that the answer is "no". Which is absolutely not the direction I thought this conversation was going to go given the enormous slant / leading language of the initial post, but one that I'm relieved / delighted to see. Good on you Roland.

[Roland of Gilead]

So . . . your concern is that in the last couple months many types of media are trying hard to avoid the anti-black bias they are historically known for and this has possibly caused overreach?

Yes, exactly that.  A bit silly sounding when you put it that way but I do feel like if they are currently doing a bit of overreach it will not help improve race relations but continue to divide the nation.

[bacchi]

So . . . your concern is that in the last couple months many types of media are trying hard to avoid the anti-black bias they are historically known for and this has possibly caused overreach?

Yes, exactly that.  A bit silly sounding when you put it that way but I do feel like if they are currently doing a bit of overreach it will not help improve race relations but continue to divide the nation.

It may be more noticeable exactly because we're not used to seeing it.

An example of media bias is the coverage of missing white girls/women vs missing black girls/women. A recent example would be that college student killed in NYC: young, white, pretty, upper middle class.*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://en.wikipedia.org/&httpsredir=1&article=7586&context=jclc

The wiki has extensive sources that support the bias theory.


* And being blonde helps, too, apparently.

[J Boogie]

So . . . your concern is that in the last couple months many types of media are trying hard to avoid the anti-black bias they are historically known for and this has possibly caused overreach?

Yes, exactly that.  A bit silly sounding when you put it that way but I do feel like if they are currently doing a bit of overreach it will not help improve race relations but continue to divide the nation.

I think the way media companies use race is concerning as it plays into a larger problem of creating widespread misinformation of the public.

For example, the news cycles that proliferate after a black person being killed by the police create the idea that this is first and foremost a racist cop problem. However, less compelling stories about white people being killed by the police don't garner as much attention. Because of this media bias towards a compelling narrative, most would be surprised to learn there isn't any data to support the notion that the racial bias of the police is responsible for the killings. The data suggests that eliminating the biases of all police officers would do little to materially reduce the total number of police killings of black Americans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html

Unfortunately, our narrative-driven collective outrage has occasionally led us to seek unhelpful solutions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/implicit-bias-training-salt-lake/548996/

Regardless, there is a large focus on non-racial police and law reform right now which is good*. Things like qualified immunity and police depts investigating themselves are problems that thoughtful proactive readers (as opposed to those whose news consumption is less intentional) have targeted as ripe for change.



*Not to say that there aren't any laws which indirectly punish minorities (ie marijuana and crack laws) that should be changed as well

[By the River]

I believe that the way stories are emphasized is racially biased.  From a much less important topic that what is happening today, in 2018, there was a spate of stories about kids selling water or lemonade and neighbors called the police.   I ran various search terms and found 20 separate incidents published during 2018.  The majority of kids were white but blacks were somewhat over-represented.   However, of the 5 that made national news (ABC, CBS, NY Times, USAToday, etc) 3 were for black kids, 1 native American, and 1 white kid.  Most of the others made only their local newspaper/tv station (and the Miami Herald which apparently had a full-time lemonade reporter).

Note, that this was a small sample

[J Boogie]

I believe that the way stories are emphasized is racially biased.  From a much less important topic that what is happening today, in 2018, there was a spate of stories about kids selling water or lemonade and neighbors called the police.   I ran various search terms and found 20 separate incidents published during 2018.  The majority of kids were white but blacks were somewhat over-represented.   However, of the 5 that made national news (ABC, CBS, NY Times, USAToday, etc) 3 were for black kids, 1 native American, and 1 white kid.  Most of the others made only their local newspaper/tv station (and the Miami Herald which apparently had a full-time lemonade reporter).

Note, that this was a small sample

Calling the cops on a black kid selling lemonade is what we would now call going full Karen.

[nessness]

My local newspaper has a policy to only include the race of crime victims or suspects if it is clearly relevant, such as when police suspect the crime to be a racially motivated hate crime. So in your example, a black man running over BLM protesters is not a racially motivated hate crime, so the suspect's race is not relevant. A white man commiting the same crime might be, or might be suspected to be, depending on the other facts of the case.

[iris lily]

My local newspaper has a policy to only include the race of crime victims or suspects if it is clearly relevant, such as when police suspect the crime to be a racially motivated hate crime. So in your example, a black man running over BLM protesters is not a racially motivated hate crime, so the suspect's race is not relevant. A white man commiting the same crime might be, or might be suspected to be, depending on the other facts of the case.

I agree with this.

To the OP: there is no monolithic “the media. “. Every responsible news organization has a policy about this.

Sometime ago, probably years now, I looked into the policy of the St. Louis Post Dispatch in giving the race of people in the story and as I remember, and my memory is certainly fallible, it was kind of a “it depends”  as outlined by nessness.

[Michael in ABQ]

What angle/narrative will generate the most attention? That will generally answer how race is portrayed by the media. They are in the business of getting attention whether it's clicks, views, ratings, however you measure it. They have found the generating controversy or fear is a reliable way to get people to consume their product. How much news do we consume when everything is fine? How much more do we consume when they make it seem like we're one step from Armageddon? it doesn't matter what the controversy is, as long as it gives them material for new content that ultimately gets attention and translates into ad dollars or subscription sales.

[js82]

My local newspaper has a policy to only include the race of crime victims or suspects if it is clearly relevant, such as when police suspect the crime to be a racially motivated hate crime. So in your example, a black man running over BLM protesters is not a racially motivated hate crime, so the suspect's race is not relevant. A white man commiting the same crime might be, or might be suspected to be, depending on the other facts of the case.

This is how it should be - and I suspect, as it usually is.

The most common type of crime when it comes to race is white-on-white (Source: publicly available FBI murder statistics), but you never hear about that because... well, it's normal, so no one bats an eye when a poor white person kills another poor white person(unless there's another aspect of the crime that makes it rarer/more newsworthy).  Ditto Black-on-Black crime, except when it comes from someone trying to defend corrupt police departments.  We life in a society that still has a high degree of de facto segregation, so this shouldn't be entirely surprising.

Race really shouldn't come into play unless A) the suspect is still at large, and race is relevant to identifying the perpetrator, or B) there's reason to believe it's related to the incident in question.  Bonus points for C) It's captured on camera so it's obvious.  Somehow there just aren't that many videos circulating of police using extreme, unnecessary force against white victims, despite the fact that 1) there are more white than black citizens in this country, and 2) More total crimes are committed by white citizens than black citizens in this country.  It's extremely unlikely that cops have been caught on video abusing white victims nearly as often as they've abused black victims - because that shit would be all over the internet.

I think media companies are becoming increasingly incentivized to put out stories that will be shared throughout social media.

I think the bias is incidentally racially biased, but more to the point, it is biased toward the most profitable emotion for them - outrage.

I do think there's a a degree of truth in this - media companies will put out whatever sells.  However, "Whatever sells" looks quite a bit different depending on whether your're CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or OAN.

[MasterStache]

They are certainly bias against Pit Bills. Dog attacks are rarely if ever news worthy, unless of course the dog looks like a Pit Bull. Then it often makes headline nationally.

[MudPuppy]

I say this gently and as a person with 3 pitbulls under their roof, drawing direct comparison between racial discrimination and dogs is probably not the right energy to be bringing.

[J Boogie]

My local newspaper has a policy to only include the race of crime victims or suspects if it is clearly relevant, such as when police suspect the crime to be a racially motivated hate crime. So in your example, a black man running over BLM protesters is not a racially motivated hate crime, so the suspect's race is not relevant. A white man commiting the same crime might be, or might be suspected to be, depending on the other facts of the case.

This is how it should be - and I suspect, as it usually is.

The most common type of crime when it comes to race is white-on-white (Source: publicly available FBI murder statistics), but you never hear about that because... well, it's normal, so no one bats an eye when a poor white person kills another poor white person(unless there's another aspect of the crime that makes it rarer/more newsworthy).  Ditto Black-on-Black crime, except when it comes from someone trying to defend corrupt police departments.  We life in a society that still has a high degree of de facto segregation, so this shouldn't be entirely surprising.

Race really shouldn't come into play unless A) the suspect is still at large, and race is relevant to identifying the perpetrator, or B) there's reason to believe it's related to the incident in question.  Bonus points for C) It's captured on camera so it's obvious.  Somehow there just aren't that many videos circulating of police using extreme, unnecessary force against white victims, despite the fact that 1) there are more white than black citizens in this country, and 2) More total crimes are committed by white citizens than black citizens in this country.  It's extremely unlikely that cops have been caught on video abusing white victims nearly as often as they've abused black victims - because that shit would be all over the internet.

I think media companies are becoming increasingly incentivized to put out stories that will be shared throughout social media.

I think the bias is incidentally racially biased, but more to the point, it is biased toward the most profitable emotion for them - outrage.

I do think there's a a degree of truth in this - media companies will put out whatever sells.  However, "Whatever sells" looks quite a bit different depending on whether your're CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or OAN.

And I think stories sell in different ways. For example stories about Karen tattling gets outrage shares whereas a story about black guys committing violent crimes probably gets a lot of private clicks from some of the same people. Conspicuous vs inconspicuous news consumption.

[MasterStache]

I say this gently and as a person with 3 pitbulls under their roof, drawing direct comparison between racial discrimination and dogs is probably not the right energy to be bringing.

I certainly wasn’t drawing comparisons. Just tossing a curveball into the conversation. 😁

[GuitarStv]

They are certainly bias against Pit Bills. Dog attacks are rarely if ever news worthy, unless of course the dog looks like a Pit Bull. Then it often makes headline nationally.

A dog attack is not the fault of the breed of the dog, it's on the owner of the animal of course.

73% of fatal dog attacks in the US are pit bull attacks (https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-quick-statistics.php).  Pit bulls are a naturally aggressive breed of dog with a powerful bite and are difficult to control when they attack.  They also do more damage than other breeds of dogs when they attack people (https://journals.lww.com/annalsofsurgery/Abstract/2011/04000/Mortality,_Mauling,_and_Maiming_by_Vicious_Dogs.23.aspx).  They require more training than many dog owners are capable of providing.  They are commonly sought out and owned by criminals as well (https://blog.dogsbite.org/2008/01/pit-bull-owners-more-likely-to-be.html), which probably hurts their numbers.

I'd posit that all of these facts play into the different news coverage and bias that the breed receives.

[MudPuppy]

Gonna strongly disagree with you on the “pits are naturally aggressive” thing and also state that this is not a direction we want a discussion on human discrimination to go down. I think large swathes of people who want dogs aren’t ready to be in the care of sentient beings (because dogs are) and apply inhumane or excessive tactics to achieve behavior desired.

[MasterStache]

A dog attack is not the fault of the breed of the dog, it's on the owner of the animal of course.

Agreed

73% of fatal dog attacks in the US are pit bull attacks (https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-quick-statistics.php).

Dogsbite.org is a very unreliable source of info. There is a big problem with that claim as per the website's admission: "Our data for U.S. dog bite fatality statistics is largely based on a massive number of news reports -- which often include photographs and video -- collected at the time of the attack."

Basically she ("she" being the owner of dogsbite.org) is relying on news articles and photographs for breed identification. There are so many mixed breed type dogs out there it isn't practical nor accurate to simply look at a dog and claim it's a Pit Bull. News reporters are not experts in breed identification and routinely get it wrong. Even Shelter Workers and Vets get it wrong. 

Dogsbite.org has a vendetta against Pit Bull type dogs. The woman who created the website did so to help enact BSL. Every national organization relating to animal and dog interaction/behavior is against BSL not to mention the plethora of evidence showing it doesn't work. I wouldn't rely on that website for any sort of information. 

Pit bulls are a naturally aggressive breed of dog with a powerful bite and are difficult to control when they attack.

They are not naturally aggressive. Pit Bull aggression toward a human is almost always a result of lack of training, socialization and/or abuse. Pit Bull is also not a breed. It's a term used to describe several breeds of dogs. 

They require more training than many dog owners are capable of providing.  They are commonly sought out and owned by criminals as well, which probably hurts their numbers.

Absolutely! As a bully owner (our dog is more of a mixed bully breed) I would discourage anyone from owning a larger breed of dog that requires training and socialization that the owner is not able to provide. 

Ok I've successfully derailed this conversation. Sorry OP ( :

[iris lily]

Master stash, thanks for your derailment. I could’ve made clear couple of the points in your post but could not do the full Monty, so good for you.

[American GenX]

It seems the media will withhold the race of an individual if they are not white and commit a crime but will put their race in bold if they are white and commit a crime.

A very recent example is the guy in the Jag who just killed a protester in Seattle with his car.   You just about cannot find out his race by searching the stories but it turns out he is a black guy.

The same crime by a white person and it would be "White male strikes and kills protestor in Seattle"

What is it that makes the media biased and is it really healthy for the country to have this bias?

Oh yeah, I've noticed that for years.  I've seen the same thing regarding illegal aliens.

[Just Joe]

I think American media is biased on a variety of topics including race and xenophobia. 

American coverage of an international topic: we see stereotypical third world conditions.
International coverage of same international topic: we see daily life not unlike the rest of the world.

It might indicate American coverage was done from the poorest, most ruined neighborhood the crew could find.

Why? Sensationalism? Confirmation for the American viewer who never travels that the whole world is worse than American suburbia? Is it xenophobia?

Re local crime reports: are minorities called out more, or minorities committing more crime?

[bacchi]

Re local crime reports: are minorities called out more, or minorities committing more crime?

On Fox, the most widely watched MSM, illegal aliens are called out more. Instead of "Man kills family, self, in Florida," it'll be "Illegal alien kills family, self, in Florida."

I've never seen a headline of "White male kills family, self."