Culture diversity in the media Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Culture diversity in the media - Essay Example This paper discusses the manner in which the general media – including the press, television and films report on ethnic issues how such reporting help or obstruct the effort to elevate the cause of social and cultural diversity and prevent serious issues concerning racism in such media. The media, to a considerable extent, unintentionally tend to emphasize negative images and stereotyping in the process of news reporting or in the course of collecting information relating to issues concerning the people belonging to diverse cultural or ethnic groups. According to previous research conducted in this behalf on the portrayal of issues of people belonging to different cultural and ethnic backgrounds in the British and American media, the migrants were omitted from voicing their opinions and were ignored while reporting issues regarding the problems faced by their community. Such an incident was witnessed in the year 1990 while reporting on the issue of wearing a headscarf that was debated in countries like France and Denmark. The migrants opinion was either not quoted at all or it was not given due prominence by the media while reporting on the issue. They were often misquoted or quoted in a discriminatory manner which exuded negativity and sounded superficial, aggress ive and stereotypical. It is also noted that the opinion of people belonging to a minority group are often misinterpreted since a single set of representatives are interviewed over and over again which loses the credibility of their opinion and views and less importance is given on reporting of such an issue from the point of view of a diverse range of interviewees. Another significant issue that emerged during the study was that the media is highly biased towards reporting of certain important events of political nature. Consequently the everyday aspect of the minority life, for instance their