Racism
analyses the contribution news coverage in the
press makes to new racism, which opts for a
more subtle negative portrayal of ethnic groups
rather than the more obvious and open racism of
the past. Van Dijk writes that ‘most mentions of
“terrorists” (especially also in the US press) will
stereotypically refer to Arabs. Violent men who
are our friends or allies will seldom get that label.
‘For the same reason, “drug barons” are always
Latin men in South America, never the white
men who are in the drugs business within the US
itself.’ New racism extends to selection of stories
for news coverage, and van Dijk argues that as
regards news about immigrants and ethnic
minorities, there is ‘a preference for those topics
that emphasize Th eir bad actions and Our good
ones’. The consequence, he concludes, is that
‘systematic negative portrayal of the Others, thus
vitally contributed to negative mental models,
stereotypes, prejudices and ideologies about the
Others, and hence indirectly the enactment and
reproduction of racism’.
Another fairly recent study reported in Race in
the News by Ian Law (Palgrave, 2002) examined
coverage of race news across radio, television
and the press during six months from 1996
and 1997. Th e study found that there had been
a shift towards an anti-racist stance in news
coverage, a willingness to expose racist attitudes
and behaviour and a more inclusive representa-
tion of British identity, one that acknowledged
the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nature of
contemporary British society. However, in a
later publication entitled Racism and Ethnicity:
Global Debates, Dilemmas, Directions (Pearson,
2010) Law points to continuing concern over the
representation of race in media coverage of such
topics as inner-city gangs and violence, educa-
tional performance, dysfunctional families,
unemployment, sport, Muslim issues, Gypsies,
Travellers and asylum seekers.
The limited ethnic diversity among media
practitioners also continues to be an issue.
Law points to a recent report published by the
Committee for Racial Equality entitled Why
Ethnic Minority Workers Leave London’s Print
Media (CRE, 2006), which found numerous
examples of racism and discrimination towards
journalists from ethnic-minority backgrounds
within the print news media. See bigotry;
compassion fatigue; ethnocentrism;
media imperialism; other. See also topic
guide under media issues & debates.
▶Steve Fenton, Racism, Class and Culture (Macmil-
lan, 1999); Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain:
Black and Asian Images on Television (Sage, 2001);Manuel Alvarado and John O. Th ompson, ‘the
media are ... part of the dominant means of
ideological production. What they “produce”
is precisely representations of the social world,
images, descriptions, explanations and frames
for understanding how the world is and why
it works as it is said and shown to work. And,
amongst other kinds of ideological labour, the
media construct for us a defi nition of what race
is, what meaning the imagery of race carries, and
what the “problem of race” is understood to be.
Th ey help to classify out the world in terms of
the categories of race’.
In Learning the Media (Macmillan, 1987)
Manuel Alvarado, Robin Gutch and Tana Wollen
pose four main categories in which black people
are portrayed on television. (1) Th e exotic, for
example coverage of tribal dancing used to
welcome members of the Royal Family when
visiting various Commonwealth countries.
(2) The dangerous, for example coverage of
immigration as an issue that presents coloured
immigrants and asylum seekers as a threat. (3)
Th e humorous, where humour may well serve
to reinforce notions of racial diff erences to the
detriment of coloured people. (4) Th e pitied, for
example media coverage of famines in Africa and
of Western attempts to provide aid, which tend
to represent famine as resulting from the inad-
equacies of the people and their governments
rather than as a legacy of Western colonialism.
One important focus of current media research
is the role that the media play in shaping and
perpetuating racism and racist stereotypes.
Research suggests that negative and stereo-
typical images of ethnic minorities abound and
present an image of them as inferior, marginal
and a potential source of social problems. Simon
Cottle in Ethnic Minorities and the Media (Open
University Press, 2000), edited by Cottle, argues
that ‘Over recent decades a considerable body
of research conducted in both the UK and the
US has examined the media’s representations of
ethnic minorities.
‘Th e collective fi ndings of this research eff ort
generally make depressing reading. Under-
representation and stereotypical characteriza-
tion within entertainment genres and negative
problem-orientated portrayal within factuality
and news forms, and a tendency to ignore struc-
tural inequalities and lived racism experienced
by ethnic minorities in both, are recurring
research fi ndings.’
Tuen A. van Dijk in ‘New(s) racism: A
discourse analysis approach’, published in
Cottle’s Ethnic Minorities and the Media,