By Writer at The Eyeopener
Imagine my surprise as I sunk into my couch last week and flicked on the 11 o’clock CBC newscast only to find that a real-live riot was about to be served up to me, direct from the scene at the St. Lawrence Market. It was the lead story, and even before the reporter managed to talk to anyone at the scene, the screen was filled with jerky camera shots of police cars, flashing lights, cops and black youth milling about.
Black youths? Right. You get the picture. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure the story out. Word must have come over the police scanner that black youths waiting in line for an overdue rap concert were getting antsy. You can almost hear the dialogue in the newsroom: “Black youths? Rap music? Downtown? Police? Quick! We’re going live! We’ve got another Yonge Street riot on our hands. Oh boy!”
Live they went and the results were embarrassing. The reporter tried to put up an urgent spin on the story as she did a “line-of-fire” stand-up report in front of the carnage. (Black youths, police cars, cops, black youths, flashing lights, etc.) But even the camera could not tell a lie: there was nothing going on. Despite the reporter’s urgent statements that police were hoping everyone would disperse peacefully and that mounted units might be on their way; still, the camera could tell a lie. There was nothing going on.
What a show. And what a great way to prepare for a Metropolitan Toronto conference entitled “Racism in the Media” taking place at Metro Hall on Saturday, April 1. The group sponsoring the conference, the Community Reference Group on Ethno-Racial Aboriginal Access to Metropolitan Services, has identified many recent examples of racist stereotyping in the news. These include reports linking crime and immigration, the deluge of articles with an anti-black male youth stance that appeared after last year’s Just Desserts shooting, the stereotypic reporting of crime suspects as “mulatto” or “black and male,” and articles on Asian gangs. This is just a small sampling, and now they can add last week’s riot-that-never-happened to the roster. They should pose this question to the panel: Had the concert in question been the Billy Joel/Elton John double-bill instead of a bunch of rap and hip-hop groups, would the media and police response have been the same?
The conference has taken its aim the elimination of racism in the media by developing strategies and guidelines to work toward change. It’s timely that this conference should occur as this year’s Ryerson Review of Journalism hits the stands. The RRJ’s cover story says newsrooms are out of touch with their communities because they are dominated by old white males. No kidding.
This is certainly a large part of the problem with the mainstream media. And it’s only going to get worse unless news outlets take a good hard look at who they’re really serving, and how well they’re doing it.
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