RACIAL STEREOTYPING IN THE NEWS: Some General Semantics

HE NEWS MEDIA have the power to be catalysts for positive change in many areas of our culture. Among those areas is racial stereotyping. Instead, the media often perpetuate stereotyping. Many of the images of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, American Indians, and other "minorities " are shaped by the news media. It is my contention that many of those images are based on stereotypes. A variety of factors promote this perpetu-ation of stereotypic images. In this work, I hope to explore some of those factors and offer some general semantics alternatives that could help journalists change their role. Current Studies First, I will give some evidence that stereotyping does indeed exist. A recent study in the Newspaper Research journal looked at coverage of minorities-primarily African-Americans-in four major newspapers in the country. I will use the findings for the New York Times as an example. (1) The researchers found that during the 1950s the Times devoted 6 percent of its coverage of minorities to what was termed "stereo-typic coverage. " This type of coverage was defined as portraying * Gregg Hoffmann is a lecturer in the Mass Communication Department at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Wisconsin journalist. He received a Sanford I. Berman Research Scholarship in 1989 and is writing a textbook applying general semantics principles to news judgment and reporting methodology. + This article was adapted from a presentation the author made at an Institute o