Media and Racism: does the British media help maintain racism?

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Media and Racism: does the British media help maintain racism?

Racism in Britain can be traced centuries back especially to the time of the Slave Trade where Britain was regarded as a key figure in creating and maintaining racial hierarchies. This report will assess the role of the British media in maintaining racism in British society and it will focus particularly on the last forty years or so i.e. 1960’s onwards. In the report, I will largely rely on the research and work done by other authors in relation to the ‘media and racism’ but I will also include an evaluation of media coverage of the Bradford Riots in 2001. The report will conclude with a few recommendations on how the media can overcome racism.

I have discovered through my research several authors who clearly describe the media as racist and argue that the media assists in maintaining racism in society. Van Dijk (1991), states that the most original and influential early study of the Press in the reproduction of racism was done by Hartmann and Husband (1974), who argued that the media was racist and created an impression amongst readers that black people represented a problem or a threat. They were so defiant on the media being racist that they called their book ‘Racism and the Mass Media’ rather than ‘Race and the Mass Media’. Research by Critcher et al (1977) and Troyna (1981) had similar conclusions to Hartmann and Husband’s in that the media created a negative perception of black people. For example, the media portrayed the ethnic minorities especially black people as lazy, violent, murderous and welfare cheaters. Troyna adds that the only difference he noticed was that in the 1960’s the focus was on immigration problems and in the 1970’s it was on the problems caused by the presence of these immigrants. Van Dijk (1991) studied the 1980’s in great depth and agreed that the media was racist. He is so adamant about the media being racist that he refuses to try to prove this arguing that it has already been proven by the centuries of experiences of ethnic minority groups, massive legal evidence and the great wealth of existing research. He does give a few examples though like the negative media coverage of the 3,000 or so Tamil asylum seekers in 1985 who were described as ‘invaders’. Even into the twenty-first century, the media has continued to represent an irresponsible black social world through unfair stereotypes (Law, 2002).            

The findings of my research into the media coverage of the Bradford Riots that took place between Saturday 7th of July to Monday 9th of July in 2001 corroborated with the findings of all of the above authors. During this period there was initial rioting by Asian youths that followed by rioting by White youths about a day after. I studied the Independent and the Times newspapers for Sunday 8th July and Tuesday 10th July to analyse how the papers covered both incidents.

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On the morning after the rioting by the Asian youths both these papers had in depth coverage of the incident with headlines like ‘Asian youths stone police in new Bradford Rioting’ (Times Sunday 8th July, 2001) and the Independent had a picture clearly showing the youths rioting across two pages. Both articles referred to the ethnicity of those involved i.e. Asians on several occasions and the Independent even mentioned a shop called ‘Roop Fashions – discover Asia in elegance’, which was only one amongst several shops on the same road.

In contrast, the coverage by the same papers on ...

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