Media and Minorities

26
Augie Fleras
caricatures of the past,24 partly because of a collective media cringe at being
branded racist or reactionary.25 Mainstream media in Canada are loathe
to criticize migrants or government minority policy openly for fear of disturbing
a national consensus or inciting a frosty consumer reaction. They
also take pains to avoid explicitly vilifying immigrants by stripping stories
of unnecessary references to race or religion (“race-tagging”) or, alternatively,
emphasizing the loyalty and law-abidingness of most new Canadians.26 Yet
negativity persists, albeit in a more oblique manner. For example, minorities,
peoples and migrants are rarely criticized on the basis of physical inferiority.
A categorical dislike is replaced by a situational antipathy predicated on the
premise that migrants/minorities/peoples are culturally incompatible or socially
deviant.27 Migrants, peoples and minorities are demeaned by association
with negative news contexts, including moral panics related to (a) crime,
public disorder and deviance; (b) so-called “reverse discrimination” against
whites; (c) religious fundamentalism; (d) home country troubles and (e) security
or medical risks.28 This tainted-by-association frame tends to essentialize
(“homogenize”) members of a race or ethnicity despite the complexity of
their lived realities.29
Scholarly efforts to explain persistent media misrepresentation of minorities,
migrants and peoples span the spectrum from micro to macro. Explanations
include hard-boiled business decisions that reflect market forces
and revenue streams; media personnel who unconsciously frame representations
from a mainstream (Eurocentrically white) perspective; traditional
news production protocols, including the 24/7 agenda-driven news cycle and
an exclusionary reliance on familiar sources and voices of authority;30 deeply
24 Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11
(New York: New York University Press, 2012).
25 William McGowan, Coloring the News. How Political Correctness has Corrupted American
Journalism (New York: Encounter Books, 2001).
26 Mark Silk, “Islam and the American News Media Post September 11,” in Mediating Religion.
Studies in Media, Religion, and Culture, eds. Jolyon Mitchell and Sophia Marriage
(New York: T. and T. Clark, a Continuum Imprint, 2008): 73–88.
27 Yolande Pottie-Sherman and Rima Wilkes, “Good Code Bad Code: Exploring the Immigration-Nation
Dialectic Through Media Coverage of the Herouxville ‘Code of Life’
Document,” Migration Studies 2, no. 2 (2014): 189–211.
28 Jessika ter Wal, Leen d’Haenans, and Joyce Koeman, “(Re)presentation of Ethnicity in EU
and Dutch Domestic News: A Quantitative Analysis,” Media, Culture, and Society 27, no.
Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural
Boundaries (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2005); Charles T. Adeyanju and Temitope
Oriola, “‘Not in Canada’: The Non-Ebola Panic and Media Representation of the Black
Community,” African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4, no. 1 (2010): 32–49.
29 Arlene Davila, Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race (New York: New
York University Press, 2008); Fleras, Racisms in a Multicultural Canada.
30 Clark, “‘Walking Up a Down-Escalator.’”
© 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
ISBN Print: 9783525300886 — ISBN E-Book: 9783666300882