The Upset

Sooo, Tyler Perry has done it again with one of his smash hitting movies. Opening week, 'Why Did I Get Married,' came in number one beating out the number two spot 'Michael Clayton,' by double. Once again, the promotion was shoddy for one of his [Perry] movies and once again he rocks at the box office. While other mainstream movies 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' and 'We Own The Night,' get rave reviews, B and B- respectively, Perry's movie isn't even rated by critics on Yahoo! but users give it an A-.

Once again, Perry proves that minorities will and do spend money to see quality movies that represent other minorities.

Perceptions

This semester I took an internship with the Washington Post working at the breaking news desk. It's a great opportunity to learn, and I have learned a lot, but there are aspects of the job or rather I should say the news makers that make me question whether the public is being underserved. Here is what I found just by watching the newsroom.

Before starting this internship, I never really looked at what was being “left out” of the media. I always thought news was given to you in an unbiased way- or at least that’s the way it should be. Working in this environment I see how race, status, class and culture play an integral part in media and how much, or little, coverage a story gets.

Example:

O.J. Simpson was charged with several crimes over the past few weeks, in connection with a Las Vegas hotel robbery. Britney Spears as the most highly hit/watched page the day following the MTV VMA Awards. Michael Vick was all over the news when he was being indicted on dog-fighting charges. Madeline McCann, an English girl, went missing in Portugal and has yet to be found.

While all of these cases have been popular with the public and even emotionally felt, there are other stories that are not getting talked about, that are missing mainstream media, that are just as or even more important, are missing the general public.

It is a shame that Simpson had more headlines, more articles, and more T.V. “breaking news” stories than the six young black men in Jena, Louisiana who were charged with attempted murder in a school yard fight with a white-classmate. What some see as a modern day lynching and blatant racism that would condemn these young men for basically the rest of their lives, gets minimum coverage-until activists call for a protest.

A black woman is kidnapped and held against her will for a week, where she is brutally beaten, stabbed, choked, sexually assaulted and forced to eat animal feces. Yet her story isn’t covered until the police have recovered her from her tormentors; never once was there a report on a missing black woman.

The perception is poor people don’t read or watch the news and upper/middle class families can’t relate to a victim that is unlike them. This is the main reason why we don’t see or hear about children of ethnicity that go missing. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, each year there are 58,000 non-family child abductions and 42 percent are African-American. All children are important but some just ring household names such as Amber Hagerman (Amber Alert), Madeline McCann, and Elizabeth Smart but what about the Jaquilla Scales and Kendrick Jackson’s of the world. It could be that there just isn’t enough diversity in the newsroom but at some point the media has to represent the underserved.

This is just one of the many observations that I have observed at the Washington Post over the past week.

My First Post

Since this is the first post, I suppose I should let you know what this blog is all about. This blog is for my Comm 361, Online Journalism, class. What you will find here is news that you might not find in mainstream media. Whether it be about a big case that is not getting enough coverage, i.e. Jena 6, or cases that maybe people don't want heard, i.e. Texas oil tycoon who gave payoffs to Sadaam Husein for oil kickbacks to his company.

Other days when there is nothing to write about but still maybe interesting you will find David Letterman's comments (Everybody loves Dave), random photos with commentary and what ever else sparks my interest. I hope you read and enjoy but I know not everyone will agree so please leave a comment. I expect this blog to go through December and be turned off but in this time I hope I spark something in you and you start to read a little more into the media than what's merely written and covered.