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“I very rarely see white teens acting up”[1]

‘Black youths are a target of a negative and misguided representation within British mainstream media.’ To what extent is this statement true?

It is this essay’s contention that black youths are portrayed in contemporary media as thugs, out of control, anti-social and people who cause mayhem to society. Since the proportion of ethnic minorities ‘in London is over 30%’ - and ‘8% of the UK population’[2]this perhaps could be a reason why ethnic minorities within the UK are represented as subordinates within the media. With Britain as a democracy, and a multi-cultural society, one would think the media would represent a more diverse Britain and celebrate the hybridity of culture? Yet irresponsible captions, anchorage, controversial headlines, and ongoing moral panics are some of many techniques used by the media to unfairly present almost all black youths as violent thugs. Consequently, Milligan argues ‘young black people grow up in a society where media images of black people are often negative and that it is therefore no surprise that many black children internalise such negative views about black people’[3]. Could this negative representation be a way in which the media punishes and suppresses black youths as an ethnic minority threatening progressive change in society? Or reinforce hegemonic values? Althusser, a Marxist theorist, argued the media was like an ‘ideological state apparatus’-where the ruling class pass down their values onto society and use their social status/position to manipulate audiences, making their views appear ‘right’. So the extent to which the British media actually reflect the truth and reality of social issues is highly debatable.
Firstly, in terms of print media, tabloids such as ‘The Sun’ and ‘Daily Mirror’ generate ‘moral panics’, which is the sense that a group threatens the social order within society. Cohen, who originated the theory, argues a moral panic occurs when ‘a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests’[4] This is particularly expressed by tabloid newspapers who are politically biased, for example ‘The Sun’ is politically in favour of the Conservatives- who are a right wing political party which often follows traditional values. The use of moral panics to describe the social concern of knife crime does reflect the media’s attempt to marginalize black youths in society. However, the negative representation of the media does reflect the social concerns within the media as ‘Black people make up only 5% of the United Kingdom’s population. However, over 50% of the prison population is black and 40% of the black population is unemployed’. This is when the use of moral panics does reflect the ‘zeitgeist’. However, the irony is that the media continuously focus on the negative issues within society and ignore the positive which would create a fair representation of black youths, the media clearly do not take the ‘we are all alike approach’. For example ‘The Sun’ had printed a article titled ’20 minute gang fight... and no one calls the cops’[5]. Interestingly, ‘The Sun’ hasn’t used a written article to produce an in-depth coverage of the struggles in London, ‘The Sun’ has focused on the pictures to anchor the events. Within this particular article ‘The Sun’ have circled a weapon used in the gang fight. ‘The sun’ haven’t used a liberal perspective to allow readers to make up their own mind about the their views on gang violence between youths, instead they have used images to anchor the meaning. This is very much linked in with the hypodermic needle theory as Berger(1995) argues that the media use the ‘magic bullet’[6] theory where the media’s message is like a bullet fired from a ‘media gun’[7] into the audience’s ‘head’[8] However, the struggle of the subordinate representation against the dominate representation is becoming increasingly difficult as ‘Every year 1000 black pupils are permanently excluded and nearly 30,000 receive a fixed period exclusion. Black pupils are three times more likely to be excluded than their White peers; after all other background factors are taking into account.’[9]With this rising concern the negative representations and moral panics are – unfortunately- serving a purpose to demoralize and therefore justify the mistreatment of an ethnic group. Therefore, this constant recurring ideology of black youths acting this way has created fear within society. The audiences are ‘injected’ with this representation that the media feeds, and according to the hypodermic needle model, many audiences are passive and therefore take in these negative representation and psychologically create fear within.

On and off screen representations certainly help to discover the route of whether the negative representations of black youths are misguided. In an article by the ‘Guardian’ which titles ‘Not enough black people in the top media job says Henry’[10]where it focuses on black people securing the acting roles more frequently and behind the camera as well. The comedian Lenny Henry has called for the media to do "huge seismic shift"[11]in recruitment. Henry also said that "Until there are more people of colour involved in the decision-making processes both on mainstream commercial TV and on the BBC, black and brown people in this country will never feel they are represented fairly on television.’[12]This is also a reflection in the figures of black people working in the managerial position, where there are over 2000 employees, only 11.5% of them are from ethnic minorities.
Furthermore, through the uses and gratification’s theory audiences who consume content from a contemporary media landscape have changed since the 1970’s, because of the rise in ethnic minorities moving to London. This particular theory is useful because it focuses on “what people do with media” rather than “what media does to people” (Katz, 1959)[13] because it focuses on the fact that audience’s have moved from being passive to active, therefore black youths being a target of a misguided representation within the media are only true if audience’s choose to accept it. Furthermore, a article posted by the BBC which is titled- ‘Black, middle class and invisible’[14] focused on the stereotypes within wider society when black people have achieved economically and socially are still ignored. This article is significant in understanding whether the media’s representation of black youths in fact misguided because it shows the success of the media and how this negative representation is believed by society.
The stereotypes of the media have only been associated with violence and drugs, they are represented as deviant characters as a whole. The theory of stereotypes has been developed further by Stuart Hall where he argued that ‘ethnic minorities are continually misrepresented by racial stereotypes’[15]. Just to show the power that the media hold of manipulating and influencing how events in the world are shown, items of clothing have now become symbols of fear and connotations of deviance. E.g. Hoodies are no more looked as a stylish item of clothing that youths can wear; hoodies are now a symbol of violence and danger. This issue and debate of stereotyping can also be linked to an issue into the media’s representation post 9/11 where the perception of Islam has changed and Islam is now looked as a religion which promotes and carry out death and destruction for people. Additionally, because of this the headscarf is no longer seen as liberation for women to guard themselves from the ‘male gaze’ [16] but now in the media that liberation has been taken away and subverted which has now turned into a symbol of oppression. It is these representations by the media that convey a constructionist view where ‘our knowledge of the world is constructed by media representations’[17]. Therefore, to a large extent the representations of black youths are misguided because they are subjected to negative representations that cannot be fought against.
Since World War II there was a substantial amount of immigration to the UK from Africa, Caribbean and Asia, in the media, these are origins that best describe the subordinate group. Britain is known to be a diverse society, where some academics go as far as describing Britain as being a place which has ‘super diversity’[18]This essay looks in-depth about the extent to which the media target black youths, one of those reasons can be because of institutional racism within schools which lead the media to build this representation through taking a conformist approach which excludes black youths out of the classroom but also by the media and society- leading on to them being marginalised and creating anti-subcultures. Troyna and Williams (1986) explain the differences that occur in the education system. Firstly, there is ‘individual racism’ which is prejudice views from individuals, and there is ‘institutional racism’ which is ‘discrimination that is built from the way institutions such as schools operate’[19]. For example, within the television drama ‘Waterloo Road’ that is broadcasted on BBC1- the young teenager Earl appears in one episode in which he shoots his girlfriend and is arrested by the police- this is a scene particularly which reinforces the antagonisms between the police and youths. To a large extent this is a misguided representation of black youths because the character ‘Earl’ is mainly portrayed as the ‘baddy’ a term which mostly is intertwined with the concept binary oppositions, which is where ‘a text is divided into two clear groups of characters, situations, or values, e.g. police and criminals’[20]. As well as the rise in immigration to mark the beginning of Britain being a multi-cultural society, the scene portrayal of ‘Earl’ and the shooting also raises the awareness about censorship and regulation of media. Within the drama series ‘Waterloo’ and the films such as ‘Kidulthood’ and ‘Adulthood’ showcase a debate in media about whether it is right to show props used such as guns, knives, and scenes which include violence, this is shown to the audience for them to watch with the naked eye. Therefore, when it comes to ‘black people, particularly Afro-Caribbeans are portrayed in the media as criminals’[21] and taking examples like ‘Waterloo’ and ‘Kidulthood’ into perspective, it suggests that black youths are antisocial, violent thugs who take the illegitimate route to success as a result of being part of a ‘yob culture’ [22]

The social and political contexts influencing a media text are often very clear. For example, A Time To Kill (1996)- is a film about a black father who sends his child to get groceries from the store is raped and beaten by two drunk and racist thugs, the father then kills the thugs cold blooded and is faced with a trial for manslaughter in the racist part of America which is the south. It is films such as these which showcase the historical struggles of black people within society. Samuel. L. Jackson’s character- who is one of the most prominent black actors in the film industry’s history – was represented as a subordinate who had to fight the racial stereotypes of society and the justice system. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the media’s portrayal can be argued from a market-liberalism perspective. Market liberalists argue that audience’s preference decide what media texts are produced. This perspective suggests that the power and influence of media texts rests with the audience and not the institution. As ‘Stuart Hall shows how real meanings are never fixed but always contested’[23]Therefore, the extent to which media texts portray black youths negatively are only effective unless the audience accepts and consumes the text produced, because if audiences consume texts then this generates profit for the institution which influence the institution to further distribute content. However, as money is a integral reason why institutions distribute content, however the media are sensitive to audiences reactions as- Princess’ Diana’s death shocked Britain the media did not show pictures of Diana -who was badly injured- as this may have offended people.

Furthermore, Tesa Perkins suggests that ‘stereotypes can often express something about real social relations’[24]. With events within history such as the Civil Rights Movement has a major impact on how black youths and particularly black people are portrayed within local and global news. Individually and as a group this will play a huge role into completely disproving all the stereotypes that have been created and use the Civil Rights Movement in a positive way to show the together and powerful community that black people have within the 21st century. The ideologies of my production as a whole would be to 'not judge a book by its front cover' and not to become passive audience as the unfair representation within the media is not serving a purpose for the sake of reporting news it is in fact a way in which exaggerated stories are a fast way to make money and gain power within the media as the media plays a highly influential role within society today. Furthermore, it can be argued that this representation comes a lot from the Brixton riots that occurred in 1981 and which is most famously known as ‘bloody Saturday’[25] by TIME Magazine, which marked a historical event within British history where this riot marked the beginning of black communities in Britain to be marginalised in society and the media. This event suggests to a large extent, that black youths are a target of a negative representation within the media because the riot was triggered by a young black youth who was a victim of a knife crime and was stabbed and a sense of anger occurred because the police officer at the scene hadn’t called for medical help for the youth. Therefore, it is ironic when this youth was a victim of a crime but a member of the justice system refuses to offer their help and the youth is marginalised in the media.

Additionally, Marxist perspective, Louis Althusser argues that the media is like an ‘Ideological state apparatus’[26], in which the ruling class pass their ideologies and views through their social position within society. Marxism is a conflict theory founded by Karl Marx which argues that society is a capitalist system in which capitalism only benefits the ruling class and legitimises class inequalities. Therefore, applying this theory into context; black youths are negatively portrayed because this reflects the ideologies of the ruling class and not society. Therefore, looking into the debate about media ownership and control, ‘the editor of the newspaper may well have "freedom" but freedom within certain limits. They cannot risk printing anything that offends the sensibilities of the owner as if they do this they risk unemployment.’[27], therefore, black youths are in fact portrayed negatively and this representation is misguided because the content distributed has many ideologies behind it and this representation does misguide people because a criticism could be that the media’s portrayal of black youths is too deterministic and only represents the ruling class’ ideologies and not the ideologies of society. Finally, the irony by the media is clear as the media also fail to be unbiased, because they ignore positive achievements of black youths.

To conclude, the debate about whether the media’s portrayal of black youths truly reflects the zeitgeist is what will provide the answers. ‘Black youths are a target of a negative and misguided representation within British mainstream media’- the misguided representations of black youths to a small extent does reflect the zeitgeist, however, to a large extent black youths are targeted negatively. On the other hand, this representation can only be fulfilled if the audience buy into what the media is distributing, therefore theories such as the 'The 'hypodermic model' assumed media effects were simple and direct a casual connection existing between what people see, hear and read in the media and their knowledge’s, attitudes and behaviour'.[28] Therefore, this misguided representation by the media is continuing because audiences believe in this representation by the media.



[1] http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/304357-inner-city-black-youth-14.html
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_6360000/newsid_6368100/6368173.stm
[3]http://partner.ncb.org.uk/ncercc/ncercc%20practice%20documents/ncercc_goodoutcomeswithbmechildreninrcc.pdf
[4] Cohen, Stanley. (2003). Page 139
[5] http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1648516.ece
[6] Berger, A. (1995). P.g. 192
[7] Ibid
[8] Ibid
[9] http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/ethnicminorities/resources/PriorityReviewSept06.pdf
[10] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/nov/25/broadcasting.race
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] Katz, E. (1959). P.g. 232
[14] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4595072.stm
[14] Laughey, D. (2009). P.g. 122
[15] Laughey, D. (2009). p. 78.
[16] Mulvey, L. (1975). p.54.
[17] Andrews, M. Burton, J. Stevenson, E. (2009). p. 182
[18] Vertovec, S. (2007). Page 232
[19] Troyna, B. Williams, J. (1968)
[20] http://www.helium.com/items/265124-how-are-ethnic-minorities-portrayed-in-the-media
[21] http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2001/life_of_crime/yob_culture.stm
[22] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/nov/25/broadcasting.race

[24] Casey, Bernadette.(2002). Page 232
[25] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952979,00.html
[26] http://changingminds.org/explanations/critical_theory/concepts/isa.htm
[27] http://www.smirnov.demon.co.uk/socialism/overview/media.htm
[28] Williams, K. (2003). Page 166