Sunday, April 17, 2011
Race in Hurricane Katrina
I found it very interesting that this article focused on the stereotypical images of black people in the journalistic photo coverage of Hurricane Katrina, mainly because I have never perceived these images as such, until I read this article.After reading this article and taking a closer look at the images of Hurricane Katrina that were in the media, I noticed that white victims were rarely included. In majority cases, the victims in the images were black and were portrayed as poor and helpless, while white people occupied the roles of politicians and volunteers for the Red Cross. I was highly disturbed by the captions of the photos by the Associated Press and Getty Images described in the beginning of the article. Why was the black man captioned as "looting" and not "looking for food?" Most importantly, I wonder why the media outlets did not recognize this racial stereotype and change the caption of the black man to match that of the white victims. I was also surprised to know that the media is infamous for misrepresenting and poorly reporting disaster coverage. This news is disheartening, being that the media should function as the voice and representation of the people. However, it just goes to show that the media has abused its purpose in some cases.
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Jordan, I agree with what you have said. The media has abused its purpose in some instances; and as a result some audiences may find it futile because of its biases. I also read the Hurricane Katrina article and was disheartened. I believe that racism in the media is not subtle and many news outlets and journalists lack objectivity. I was also bothered by the fact that Kany West mentioned the disparities in media coverage of Hurricane Katrina during a live benefit concert, but his comments were extracted during future broadcastings of the concert. This supports my belief that the media can be unfair and their decision to remove Kanye's comments shows that they would rather not have the populace be enlightened of media biases. I am interested in finding out how you will use this knowledge in your work as a professional journalist? Does this article encourage you to be more objective when writing?
ReplyDeleteJordan,
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you hadn't considered the somewhat racist angle of many of the photos taken during Hurricane Katrina. It's one of the things I remember most about the natural disaster, and particularly the manner in which it was covered in by the media.
Parisi's article made a similar argument about the photos that accompanied this article. It really brought my attention to how framing works aside from just shaping the story. It has a such a large impact on not only how certain aspects of the story are read and already set up for readers but it also gives them preconceived notions about the article perhaps before they've even read it.