Media Bias 1

The Explicitness of Bias in the Media

Kathy Garneau
Port Huron Northern High School

Media Bias 2

Introduction
The usual flashy news introduction flies across the screen - Channel Number news,
brought to you by the best news station in town. Theres a variety of headlines; Church Burns in
Night, Dog Learns to Swim, and Black Delinquent Shoots School. Bias in the media is blatant
and ostentatious - depending on which way one person may lean politically - and in order to
attract the most consistent, and largest audience they possibly can, people working in the media
will write headlines in such a way to twist topics around to make it sound easily arguable;
basically creating a real-life monopoly game on information. Very little information can be seen
without the lenses of bias, and it is essential for someone to be able to detect such bias in order to
protect themselves from needless, harmful information. What is most damaging to a society is
how ridiculously biased the media can be, and how negatively it can impact how every
individual group see it. Gender, race, and religion are the three main issues that the media covers
with the most filtering of bias, and if the audience isnt composed of white, Christian, straight
males, they dont really care.
Media In Reference to Race
How little the media seems to care about people of color is almost a joke in itself. White
people who commit crimes have what they have done underplayed, whereas the same crime is
over-exaggerated or hyperbolized when it becomes a person of color. Research shows that when
the identity of a suspect is kept anonymous, there is almost a guarantee that the public will
believe that the person is of color. Correspondingly, if the identity of a suspect is confirmed to be
of color, it is more likely that the public will support the police, as the increased sense of threat
manifests in support for the authorities responsible for protection. (Rehavi & Starr, 2012). When
the media gets such important factors so obtusely wrong, it enforces a culture that in essence is

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harmful for all of the classes involved. It creates a society in which people of color are unable to
blend in as seamlessly as anyone who is the majority. If the NYPD only has about a fifty percent
black arrest rate, whereas the media and news stations local to that area say that it is a seventyfive percent black arrest rate, that statement alone creates a false credibility and continues to
reinforce a system that is flawed. (NYCLU, 2013).
So, if these instances are so obvious, how is a society as advanced and superior as the
United States having such problems with racial discrimination? A popular thought is that it
doesnt actually exist, and is just a construction brought about by the media, and that its
essentially just a figment of the imaginations of the population. The only issue is that there are
real-life examples of it in action - take Ferguson, the rioting and protesting portion of it
specifically, where the police would show up in full-body swat uniforms and continually beat
harmless civilians under the assumption that they had to be dangerous.. There are live videos
showing blatant police brutality among people willing to stand for a cause that they support -because it is no secret that people of color are being murdered by corrupt policemen -- and yet,
every single time the same formula is reused: making the policeman look like a true member of
the community, and garner sympathy for him, while the person of color, who is now dead and
unable to properly defend themselves, is slandered all over the media and painted out to be a bad
person. Isnt that ironic?
Medias Impact on Gender
Something that may be a little more familiar to the general scope of things is how the
media treats gender, and how much it actually varies between males and females, among other
things. For starters, this is all under the assumption that gender is not binary between sex
classifications - and that it is instead more of a spectrum. Essentially, instead of a person being

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that or that, they fall in a plane somewhere, and while sexually they may be male or female,
mentally they could identify as something else. (Gender Spectrum, 2015). While the idea of
gender equality is something that a large amount of people seem to think the United States has in
comparison to other areas of the world, there does happen to be a large amount of outrageous
discrimination that is in the country that believes itself to be so progressive. The media has
enforced a self hatred among females, and they thrive off of the need for them to be constantly
changing their idea of beauty and perfection, and obsession with chasing that idea through
hidden cookie gathering by gathering information on their imperfections. (Holmes, 2012).
But, the bias doesnt start and end with females - it extends to males, too. Theres a
perfect image of what a man should be, based on a not-so-dead idea of chivalry and hypermasculinity to the point where men cant even express their feelings without seeming inferior.
The question remains: inferior to who? In a world where equality is so ingrained, in that its
something to fight for or that its something that already exists, it is ironic to see that it extends in
all directions.
Though twenty years ago females may have been receiving less exposure in areas such
as political candidacy coverage, currently the numbers between females and males are just about
equal. (Lavery, 2013) However, it isnt the quantity that matters overall, but the quality. The fact
that most people now associate Hillary Clinton with a scandal should say everything that
statement needs to.
Gender bias also extends to the transgender communities, what with how theyre only
recently coming to light in popular media - Orange is the New Black and Caitlyn Jenner as some
examples. Since when is it okay to sit any other person down on a talk show and ask them about
their genitalia? To ask anyone who isnt transgender if they were to take off all their clothes,

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would they have male genitalia is inappropriate. Instead, the question to ask is why is there a
pressing need to know such private details at all? A strong question that talk show hosts should
be asking is: why do people feel the need to come out as trans, or as any other gender or sexual
orientation, instead of just simply accepting who they are as who they have always been?
Religions Ties Within Media
A current hot topic, and something to keep in mind, is how religion is covered in the
United States. The First Amendment is the freedom of religion; to be able to practice what one
believes in without the (hopeful) discrimination of exercising that right to practice. Though, in
todays society, it is the middle east that receives the most hatred from the media without any real
idea of what kind of hate they are beginning. There is no longer a separation of extremists and
moderates, the ones who a society can relate most to. Instead, there is an ingrained fear similar to
that of a stereotypical fear of black men and purse stealing with Muslims and planes, to the point
where it disrupts daily life in such a way that it is almost disgusting. To have a tragedy befall on
France, and then to ask a member of the Muslim community whether they had known about it
simply because they associate with the same religion that a radical, extreme group happens to be,
falls under the category of being Islamophobic. (Arana, 2015) To have a bright, green statue off
the coast of New York, a shining beacon to the world saying we accept you, no matter your
race, religion, or class - the American dream (although laughably unobtainable) is achievable
and to have it be degraded to such a standard that Syrian refugees are not allowed entrance or
permitted welcome because they, too, have been lumped into the same group that dictators over
the ages have done to many others is wrong, simply due to terrorist activities happening within
the same large area. (Fantz & Brumfield, 2015). Think about this - if white Christians were
committing the same sort of crimes (say, shooting a school) would that be called an act of

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terrorism? Or is it just a boy (not man, because that implies he has to be judged for his actions
accordingly) with mental disabilities to the point where maybe he should have been instituted
before, but despite all of this the only sort of punishment he will be obtaining will be admittance
into a mental institution now.
In Finality
The way the media is controlled and covers information is less like they want to inform the
public of current hot issues and more as though theyre trying to win a game of monopoly.
Theres the pass go and collect two hundred dollars for putting up with their incredulous bias,
as well as losing all of the money to begin with for just trying to sit along for the ride. Racial
issues are shown as a Black versus White world, in which those who are people of color fall
under the all-inclusive phrases of criminal or should work harder to achieve the same,
whereas those whom are white just have to show up to get what theyve earned. Gender gets
slapped with the concept that everything is either masculine or feminine, and straying anywhere
from the gender binary is bad and punished severely - not to the mention the struggle that it must
be to be anywhere near the minority of someone from the transgender community, given that
they are treated almost as though they are in a different specimen entirely. Religion happens to
be a more determined line of Christian and good or Other religion and bad. Although theres an
attempt at being all-inclusive, that doesnt stop prejudice from seeping through the seams and
drowning the society as a whole. In essence, to fix all of these issues, people need to start
treating others with the same respect, compassion, and decency they think that they deserve
themselves, because if the shoe were even remotely on the other foot, there would be a bigger
issue.

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References
New York Civil Liberties Union. (2013). Ending Discriminatory Policing in New York City.
Rehavi, Marit M. & Starr, S. B. (2012). Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its
Sentencing Consequences.
Lavery, L. (2013). Gender Bias in the Media? An Examination of Local Television News
Coverage of Male and Female House Candidates.
Holmes, K. (2012). Media Impact on Girls in the US, China, and India through a Gendered
Filter.
Gender Spectrum. (2015). Understanding Gender.
Arana, G. (2015). Huffington Post. Islamophobic Media Coverage Is Out Of Control. It Needs
To Be Stopped.
Fantz, A. & Brumfield, B. (2015). CNN. More than half the nations governors say Syrian
refugees not welcome.