Racial Bias
Political activist and one-time presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson said in 1985 that the news media portray black people as "less intelligent than we are."
The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy, a book published by Stanley Rothman and Mark Snyderman, claimed to document bias in media coverage of scientific findings regarding race and intelligence.
Research has shown that African Americans are over-represented in news reports on crime, and within those stories, they are more likely to be shown as the perpetrators of the crime than as the persons reacting to or suffering from it. This is true even when crime statistics indicate otherwise.
Conversely, multiple commentators and newspaper articles have cited examples of the national media undereporting interracial hate crimes when they involve white victims as compared to when they involve black victims. Jon Ham, a vice president of the conservative John Locke Foundation, wrote that "local officials and editors often claim that mentioning the black-on-white nature of the event might inflame passion, but they never have those same qualms when it's white-on-black."
According to David Niven, of Ohio State University, research shows that American media show bias on only two issues, race and gender equality.
Read more about this topic: Media Bias In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words racial and/or bias:
“Please stop using the word “Negro.”... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.”
—Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)
“The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)