Press Coverage of Interethnic Conflict: Examples from the Los Angeles Riots of 1992

News media are an important source of cultural production and information. Their representation of the social world provides explanations, descriptions, and frames for understanding how and why the world works as it does. In media studies, frames refer to the perspectives on, or interpretation of, current events provided by news coverage. Frames are complex and overlapping, existing in a single news article or within an entire body of news coverage. Multiple and opposing frames may exist simultaneously. Frames are built up from the choices reporters make in terms of language use, source selection, and story organization. In their coverage of race, news media are animated by certain, usually unstated, assumptions and expectations related to perceived racial differences. Collectively, these assumptions and expectations represent a common-sense understanding of racial difference often referred to as racial ideology