Level(s): Grades 7 to 12
Overview
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This lesson makes students aware how the media's portrayals of race and crime can affect our attitudes towards various visible minority groups in our society. Students begin by deconstructing a poster of a black police officer that challenges racial stereotypes and respond to news articles about racial identification in crime reporting. As a class, students will follow news stories about crime for one month, analyzing and sorting the data according to how race is integrated into the stories. When the results have been tallied and discussed, students will complete a short paper on racial identification in stories about crime.
Learning Outcomes
Students will:
- develop an awareness of how media bias contributes to negative depictions of visible minorities in the media
- Understand the media's influence on society's perceptions of visible minorities
Preparation and Materials
For background information or other lessons about perceptions of race or perceptions of race and crime, read the selected resources on the right sidebar of this page.
Photocopy:
Procedure
Class Discussion
Place the Policeman PSA transparency onto the overhead projector. Ask your students:
- What is the message of this public service campaign?
- What stereotypes and assumptions does this ad rely on in order to be effective? How does it counteract them?
- Is this an effective ad? Why or why not?
- In his book Mass Media and Popular Culture, Barry Duncan uses the term "dangerous other" to describe our perceptions of certain individuals in society. Can you identify groups of people who might be stereotyped as “dangerous”? (This list might include immigrants, teenagers, non-whites, motorcyclists and First Nations peoples.)
- From where do we get these beliefs? (Environment, friends, family, churches, schools and the media all play a role in molding these attitudes.)
Write the following on the chalkboard:
"Police said the suspect was described as a black man in his 20s..."
"Indian Found Murdered in New Town"
"Detectives are investigating the death of an Asian employee of a brokerage firm whose body was found by the company's owner yesterday...."
Ask your students:
- What do these news stories have in common?
- When is race an appropriate element in a story?
- Are the racial identifications used in these stories relevant? Why or why not?
- What are the problems surrounding unwarranted use of racial identity in crime-related stories?
- How much do you think the media contributes to public attitudes and beliefs about people from different cultures and races?
In 2000, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation conducted a study of racist reporting in Canadian English print media. Their findings raised many concerns about media bias and discrimination in the news. They discovered
- people of colour underrepresented and largely invisible in the media;
- misrepresentation and stereotyping of those people of colour who appeared in media coverage
They concluded that “The media articulates and transmits powerful and negative narratives, images and ideas about ethno-racial minorities that can have a significant influence on the collective belief system of Canadian society” and voiced particular concern over news coverage that continually links specific groups with criminal or dangerous activity. They called this the “racialization of crime reporting” and the “the language of otherness” that pervades the media.
But they did note that colour-coded news is not necessarily intentional on the part of the press, and that many factors contribute to racially biased or limited news reporting.
- Can you think what some of these factors might be?
First, there's the lack of diversity in the news industry. This is reflected in both ownership of mainstream media outlets and the producers, editors and journalists who select and report stories. (At last count, in 2000, 97.3 per cent of Canadian journalists were white.)
Also, Canadian media has become increasingly mainstream and concentrated – which is bad news for ethnic and visible minorities.
Add to this mix the increasing pressure to treat news reporting as another form of entertainment media, and you end up with a news industry that spends little time on issues that matter to visible minorities – such as immigration, integration, equality, race relations and cross-cultural understanding – in favour of more sensational stories
Unwarranted use of racial identity is hardly limited to crime stories. One way for reporters to check whether race or ethnicity is a proper identification factor in a story might be to ask whether the individual's race would be relevant if he or she were white. Would the headlines above have identified these people as 'white'?
Distribute "Crime Has No Culture or Race" to students.
- In her article, Susan Riley makes the distinction between "Asian crime" and "crime within the Asian community." What is the difference between these two terms?
- Why are we so quick to label crime with terms like "Asian crime," "Black crime," "Youth crime," etc.?
- What role does culture play in our perceptions of race and crime?
Distribute "Crime Not Black and White" to students.
In this article Randall Denley satirizes the media's use of racial identity when reporting on crime. To make his point, he has condensed a number of journalistic tools and techniques commonly used by reporters. (For example, the use of police estimates of the percentage of crimes committed by whites, to validate concerns over this "white crime wave.") Denley also uses satire to address some of the more serious issues surrounding race-identification and crime reporting.
- Ask students to identify the journalistic tools and techniques in this article.
- What are some of the more serious issues that are addressed?
Distribute Five Angles on the Crime-Race Maze to students.
Review the article's main points regarding how statistics on race and crime can be misrepresented in the media.
Activity
Over the next month, students are to collect newspaper and magazine stories relating to crime. As these articles are brought to class, students will analyze and sort them under the following categories:
- No racial identification
- Relevant racial identification
- Unnecessary racial identification
Where racial identification occurs, they will also take note of:
- Tools and techniques used in reporting the story
- The tone and perspective of the story
- The overall effect on the reader
At the end of the month, students will tally and post their total figures.
Once the total figures are tallied, students will complete a short paper that explores the issues associated with racial identification in stories about crime. Included in this paper will be what was learned from the month of monitoring stories relating to crime and a list of ethical guidelines for journalists.
Taking Charge — Students can send their results to the magazines and newspapers they surveyed. For articles that contained unnecessary racial identification, students may wish to contact the editor responsible, to request an explanation of the newspaper or magazine's rationale for making this distinction.
Evaluation
- Short paper about racial identification in crime reporting.
