One of the first exposures to racism in the
media that I encountered was after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After the storm
passed and the streets were flooded, two special images of survivors appeared
on Yahoo.com. The first showed a white couple wading through the waist high
water with bags of food, with a caption that described them “finding” the
supplies. The other was a picture of an African-American man wading through the
same water with similar supplies, only this time he was described as “looting”
the supplies from a local grocery store. Was the African-American not trying to
survive just the same as the white people? Intentional or not, these two
pictures clearly displayed the subtle racism the media can display.
The two images & their captions side by side.
As soon as the observation was made, the
photos went viral, sweeping the nation and causing many to question the
apparent media bias. Many turned to the blogs to voice their disapproval of the
current media system. America soon found itself in a media war, debating the
difference between “looting” and “scavenging” during a natural disaster crisis.
I was very intrigued by this whole scenario. As a child, I though newspapers
and the Internet could never be wrong. For the first time that I could
remember, the media blatantly did something racist. I was pretty offended for a
while, but after diving into the media much more as I have grown up I have
realized that the media makes slip ups like this much more frequently than one
would think. Is this the media bias? We may never know for sure.
Would you consider this "scavenging" for a shelter or "looting"?
No comments:
Post a Comment