North Carolina State University News Services Campus Box 7504 Raleigh, NC 27695 (919) 515-3470
Media Contacts: Dr. Robert Entman, 919/929-8546 or 515-9743, or
[email protected]
Pam Smith, News Services, 919/515-3470 or [email protected]
July 29, 1998
New Study Challenges Media to Play Positive Role in Racial Healing
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The media wield a powerful influence on public opinion and have a critical role to play in promoting racial reconciliation in America, according to a new report on race and the media, released today (July 29) at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) meeting in Washington, D.C.
The report, "Mass Media and Reconciliation," argues that media images may unintentionally foster tensions between America's majority and minority groups. The study proposes a number of solutions, including a systematic monitoring of media images of minorities. It also calls for an open dialogue among the print, network and entertainment media.
The report's primary author, Dr. Robert M. Entman, professor of communication at North Carolina State University, said the research was submitted earlier this year to the advisory board and staff of The President's Initiative on Race. Its public release by a panel of experts was timed to coincide with the NABJ meeting, where the keynote speech was delivered by Dr. John Hope Franklin, who heads up the president's national dialogue.
Entman is nationally recognized for his research in the field of mass communication. The report is the result of a course on "Race and the Media" he taught last fall as Lombard Visiting Professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
The report reveals that, while attitudes toward blacks and other minorities have changed significantly since the 1960s, white opinions are "complicated and ambivalent," with many whites' attitudes toward specific public policy issues based on misunderstanding or outright animosity toward minority groups.
Entman suggests that the media's sins of omission may be partly to blame. By failing to provide context about minorities' current experiences with racial discrimination, the media make it difficult for many whites to resolve their doubts in a positive and empathetic manner. It's crucial for the media to expand the public's frame of reference, Entman says.
Without this kind of context, the report suggests, many Americans, especially whites, hold damaging and false ideas. One example: a majority of whites believe blacks no longer face racial discrimination, so that the main reason for blacks' lesser economic status is blacks' laziness. While the media alone may not cause the impression, the report indicates that media unintentionally reinforce it by images they include and by the information they omit.
Media images also affect public impressions about poverty and crime. Entman found blacks are more likely to be used to illustrate local news stories about poverty, giving the impression that more blacks than whites are poor. And black crime suspects are more likely to be seen in police mug shots or while handcuffed, sending a symbolic message that black defendants are more dangerous than whites accused of the same crimes.
The report should not be misinterpreted as a call for a "quota system" on good news about minorities, nor as an attempt to censor the press or limit First Amendment rights. "Playing up good news is not their business," Entman says of the media. "But it is their business to provide useful information and to convey an accurate sense of the society they cover. Without meaning to, they're conveying various misleading impressions about the nature of American society, and the behavior and problems of minority members. That makes it harder to bring about racial reconciliation."
The report recommends that media personnel engage in active dialogue about their practices, influence, and responsibilities. Such a step might help improve the accuracy and complexity of impressions Americans get about minorities through the media, Entman says, and provide momentum for support of the report's key proposal: An effort to develop systematic monitoring of media images of minorities.
Entman believes the issue of race and media is far more important than the occasional violation of ethical and professional guidelines such as those involving Stephen Glass at the New Republic or Peter Arnett at CNN. "I think it's pretty easy to blast the media for these incidents, but they are also pretty easy to discover and correct," he says. "The real dilemmas facing journalism involve the more subtle ways that commercial pressures, organizational limitations, and professional norms shape reporting every day. These forces may influence our society significantly without our awareness, as (our) report argues is true of race relations."
He adds, "Beyond the realm of race, I'd hope the report would lead some journalists to recognize this point: That the more significant and complicated ethical and professional issues revolve around these more hidden problems of inadvertently conveying wrong impressions, and not as an exceptional case but on a routine basis."
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