Profiles: Media Roles as a National Citizen

Has Media Stereotyping Hit a New Low?

By Courtney Quintrell

A recent Associated Press article about the "grim tales of cannibalism highlighting the brutality of West Africa's civil wars" posted on both CNN and FOX News is a prime example of how American media often portray "third world" countries as primitive and violent. The article details a trial where one witness testified of cannibalism in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the devastating civil wars which engulfed the region for over a decade. The media's focus on the witness' statements about "splitting, cleaning, decapitating and cooking of the corpse[s] with salt and pepper," and targeting African and U.N. peacekeepers, suggests much more than that these people are sadistic and backwards. It reinforces the idea that we are not them. This story focuses strictly on one person's testimony with hardly any context given to the complexity of the situation surrounding Sierra Leone's civil war. In this case, the media does much more to inform audiences about the 'repulsiveness' of these Africans than to actually educate the American public on the proceedings of the trial or the history behind it. The problem with this kind of reporting is that it teaches Americans to view the world in an unproductive and ignorant manner.

 

Media and the In-Group: Two Views of Amanda Knox

By Jacqui R. Macy

Looking at the case of American student Amanda Knox, one of four people accused of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in Italy, we see demonstrated the role of media as a national group member. The US and the UK media offer two starkly different accounts of the murder. Coverage from the US tends to present a friendlier picture of Amanda Knox, often talking about how friends and family remember her as the friendly, wholesome, “girl next door”. This coverage also tends to imply that those in the international arena who accuse her of being malicious are doing so simply because she is American, and therefore they have some kind of vendetta against her. In fact, the vendetta view is presented almost as a way to explain things should she be found guilty. Coverage from the UK, on the other hand, tends to present a darker view of Amanda Knox. The British victim is presented without flaws in this coverage, while Amanda Knox is characterized as a pot-smoking, unstable, sex-crazed American. The British coverage suggests that she can’t possibly be innocent.  Two nations. Two perspectives. 

 

Zimbabwe and the War for Democracy

By Alex Pepperl

10 dead, over 3,000 families ousted from their homes and an inflation rate horrific by any economic textbook. The recent troubles of the impoverished African country of Zimbabwe have lead to much concern in the U.S. media.

Why would a small country with such an insignificant effect on America be of concern? It all leads to America's ongoing fight for world democracy. The U.S. media politically socializes its citizens on the rights and wrongs of our society. Democracy has become an ideology of common sense in America, and it honorably aims to develop this as a worldwide 'way of seeing'.

Images and news in The New York Times, illustrating Zimbabweans frantically fleeing their homes in hope of escaping longtime dictator Robert Mugape, portrays the agony occurring under his dictatorship.