Gregory Freeman: Media Bias? Let's Try For Sensitivity, PD 11/14/1993

Headline: MEDIA BIAS? LET'S TRY FOR SENSITIVITY
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Nov. 14, 1993
Section: NEWS, Page: 4B, Edition: FIVE STAR

DO THE news media pay as much attention to black murder victims as they do to white ones?

The question is being raised - and answered - by Families Advocating Safe Streets, a support group for friends and relatives of black homicide victims.
The answer, says the group, is an unequivocal "no." In a news conference last week, members of the group were sharply critical of the news media for what the group considered to be less concern about black murder victims.

As a test, I conducted a small, informal survey of several white and black colleagues at television stations and newspapers here and got an interesting response: most of the whites surveyed said they saw no real disparity in coverage; the blacks, to a person, said they saw a definite difference. Fair coverage, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.
That may explain, then, my own perception of media coverage of the tragedy of murder: I must add my name to the list of those who see a disparity.

Members of the Safe Streets group cite as examples such recent news stories as the murder of a white couple in Ladue and the disappearance and murder of a white waitress outside her home in Hazelwood.
Both stories garnered a good amount of attention from the news media, and rightly so. I'm not knocking the coverage that those stories received.

But what of stories where the victims are black?
What of Ella Mae Sewell, an 84-year-old woman who was found murdered in her home in the city's O'Fallon neighborhood earlier this month? Or Elizabeth Coleman, 29, who was shot on the street in a robbery in the Walnut Park neighborhood in September? Or Vance George, 28, who was shot while standing on a front porch in September in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood?
All of those stories were covered. But, to the best of my knowledge, the news media didn't follow up on those stories.

I've been in this business for 16 years, and I know that news organizations cannot do major stories on every murder. If we even tried to do such a thing, we'd be able to cover nothing else. But more of the homicide cases that get the cameras, the microphones, the ink and the follow-up stories are the ones involving white murder victims.

Ours is a difficult business. We anger people on a daily basis. Decisions are made based on our perceptions of objective news judgment.
   Unfortunately, total objectivity doesn't exist.
   What looks like one thing to one person looks like another thing to someone else. The way we look at things is always clouded - to some extent anyway - by our own backgrounds, the way we were raised, our own ethics and religious beliefs. Editors and reporters try to suppress their own biases, but they occasionally come through.
   That, I think, explains the difference in the way white media colleagues and black ones look at the issue of black murders. We come from different backgrounds and the baggage that we're carrying - and everyone carries a certain amount of it - is different.

While there is no such thing as total objectivity, there is such a thing as fairness. The media sometimes fall down on the job.
If you perceive the city as being a place where murders are everyday occurrences - and you don't live in the city - you may be less likely to think that a murder in the city is a big story. News is, after all, the unusual.
If you perceive murder among blacks to be an everyday occurrence - and you're not black - you may be less likely to think that a murder of a black person is a big story.

But those of us in the media somehow get beyond the perceptions. Few of us, regardless of race, would fail to be shocked if someone were murdered, right this instant, in front of us. Murder is shocking and heart-wrenching, whether the victim dies on a city street or in a suburban subdivision.

I spoke to a class at Webster University recently where a couple of students asked if racism was the cause of what they perceived to be the disparity in coverage.
Maybe I'm naive - and I'm certainly not beyond that - but I think it has more to do with the aforementioned baggage than racism.
I've known only a few people in the news media who are what could be described as racists. Some people are more sensitive to minority concerns than others, but "racist" is much too strong a word.

However, the elderly woman killed in her home in the Penrose neighborhood is as newsworthy, in my judgment, as the couple killed in their home in Ladue.
We shouldn't assume that because a victim is black or lived in the city, what happened is common and therefore less newsworthy.

I don't believe the news media are racist. I do believe an added dose of sensitivity would be welcome.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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