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7 Harmful Practices Mainstream Media Exhibit When Talking About Race

Posted byBy Leo | Published on: | Updated on February 12, 2014 CommentsComments (8)

Individualizing Racism
What It Means: Concentrating attention on thoughts or acts of personal prejudice.

This reinforces the common misconception that racism is simply a personal problem that should be resolved by shaming, punishing or re-educating the individual offender. This belief often leads to long, inconclusive debates about what’s in the offender’s  “heart,” and whether or not they intended to be hurtful or discriminatory, and perpetuates false notions of individual agency in our national consciousness.

Perhaps the most common characteristic of the mainstream media’s treatment of stories on race and racism is the disproportionate share of attention that episodes of individual-level racism receive, while ignoring a deeper analysis of systemic racial injustice.

While the rate of this infraction can vary greatly depending upon the subject matter and by media outlet – such imbalances reinforce for readers the misconceived message that racism is primarily a phenomenon of overt, intentional acts carried out by prejudiced individuals. Racial transgressions, such as Paula Deen’s, are typically presented as simple, individual defects that need correcting or shaming.

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We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

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